Legend
by sustantivo
Summary: The story of a man and the many paths of light and darkness he followed to find his legend.
1. The Boy in the Water

.The Boy in the Water.

Through fire and suffering emerge the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars.

- Shaelgreath, Krogan Battlemaster

* * *

Sometimes when he closed his eyes and thought very hard, pushing through the memories that hung like bloody curtains in his mind, he found a white, soft place. He could remember being on his back there with his eyes half open, drowsy and safe with sun on his skin. The edges of things blurred together there, they lost their shape and their form; they dissolved into a cocoon of clean light around him. If he tried especially hard and reached back as far as he could sometimes a window would appear, then a piece of blue sky beyond, and echoes of a song coming from a long way away. He could never get far enough down to hear the words, but the melody came to him, something sweet and slow, meandering into tuneless, off-key humming in places.

When he was in the water it seemed nearer, somehow more true. Lying supine at the surface he could feel the heat of the sun on his face like he did in his memory. When he dove down, into the cold embrace of the salt water he could cut off the distractions of the city beyond the shore and forget everything, everything except that last memory that sat in his chest like a pearl.

It was a small memory, and he could never be certain if it was a true one. He knew that in desperate times the human mind could be subconsciously creative, constructing whole worlds for people to lock themselves away in. In many ways it could be easier to invent a more pleasing world than it was to face a bleak and unchanging truth. He knew all of this, and yet whenever he reached down into himself, into the very depths, it was always there.

X pushed back toward the surface of the ocean and took a deep breath, gulping salty air down into his aching lungs. He liked to stay down there as long as possible, where the world was crystal clear and uncomplicated. A bull shark prowled the reefs below him as he shook water from his hair and smoothed it off his forehead away from his eyes. He stayed for a moment, treading water, and watched it cut its way through a school of small fish. It didn't scare him; he envied it. It never had to come up for air and smell the stink of the city, it never had to leave its clear blue world where the rules were simple and fair: big fish eats little fish to survive, nothing more and nothing less.

He preferred that world. He preferred being the boy in the water.

X sighed and looked over his shoulder, back to Trinidad. It seemed funny to him for a moment that the government didn't dare send police past the city limits to enforce order, but had slapped severe isolation measures on the place until it stopped dumping its sewage in the ocean. It probably shouldn't have been funny, but all he could do was laugh as he started to swim toward shore, through pristine blue waters, on his way back to the cesspool of the city proper.

He found his clothes where he'd left them, buried in a plastic bag near a rundown dock, and shrugged into them. He'd washed them not even a week ago, but after the clarity of the water they felt filthy against his skin and he grimaced, peeling his oily t-shirt away from his chest as he shrugged into his jacket. He made sure to zip it all the way to the top despite the heat; he didn't want anyone to catch a hint of the red lining within while he was so far away from home. X left the beach and made his way back to the catacombs of partially collapsed streets that formed his world. By the time he made it into the city proper the day was beginning to fade from the ribbons of blue sky overhead and the squats on either side were beginning to empty, pouring their stream of human detritus into the dusk.

During certain moments, usually at dusk and dawn when the gloom obscured a majority of the filth, it was possible to see that Trinidad used to be a great city. It had been a place of sweeping boulevards, lined on either side by trees that must have once thrown sheets of cooling shadows over the city's pedestrians. There were plazas set with fountains that had at one time soared against the blue sky, before they dried up and filled with garbage. The once-grand buildings were tired, sagging behemoths; buckled and leaning menacingly overhead, ready to give up. When they were white-washed with their red clay roofs maintained, Trinidad must have been beautiful. Now those things existed as a crust of rubble that collected in corners and sliced at the feet of the careless urchins that inhabited the ruins of the city.

And there were no street signs.

It seemed like a minor detail among so much violence and chaos but it was actually one of the most fundamental parts of living in the city. With no street signs traditional navigation became close to impossible. It was instead a complex game of creative landmarks among the collapsed buildings. One building might resemble a dragon's head or a broken fountain might sport half a noteworthy statue or a spray of graffiti that denoted gang territory. The downtown neighbourhood called The Tombs was controlled by the constantly warring forces of the Red Hoods and the Black Hoods. Gates was ruled by the Sons of Hades and the tiny but relatively intact domain of the Hell's Mouth Gang was called Castle. There were a hundred large and small gangs and each of them had staked out their claim, decorating it with colours and symbols to warn off invaders.

And then there was Children's Street. True to the nature of the city, it wasn't really a street. It encompassed several blocks of what had once been affordable housing units and which now resembled nothing so much as a war zone, after everyone has already died. Barely a single unit still stood freely, and the streets had long ago disappeared under a thick layer of broken cement and drywall dust. No one ruled Children's Street. No one would want to. It was as broken and useless as the creatures that inhabited it. Some people said that Children's Street was haunted; that the victims of whatever forgotten calamity that had destroyed it still walked amidst the rubble at night.

That was a fantasy, of course, and like most fantasies it was easier to stomach than reality. Vengeful ghosts could not dream of generating the same level of horror as a walk through Children's Street on one of Cuba's rare cold nights, when the acid rain came down hard and the wind howled through the skeletons of the buildings.

Unlike the other parts of the city, there was no drama to its name. It was where all the lost and unwanted children of Trinidad gathered, skulking in the shadowy corners of the burnt-out buildings feeding on what they could steal and scavenge. Poems and books and documentaries had been made about Children's Street for twenty years but nothing about it had ever changed. It was a lost cause; a place of madness and apathy. X knew it well, like most people in Trinidad his 'childhood' had been a long stretch of years fighting with other children for scraps and hiding in the ruins of the Street.

When he had put it behind him he knew he was safe, so he unzipped his jacket and reversed it.

It was always bizarre. One moment he was nothing, just another bum dressed in dirty rags, but with the red side of the jacket showing and the bold black X drawn across his back he was instantly transformed. People he didn't even know moved out of the way for him, flashing him nervous smiles while they avoided direct eye contact. Whores of every age and creed called out to him, offering him discounts and freebies as he passed the hovels they had staked out to ply their trade. The jacket was the only authority Trinidad really recognized, gang authority. When a fruit vendor tossed him a simpering smile and an almost fresh chironja X knew it was because he recognized the jacket, not his face.

He still ate it. Fruit was a luxury in Trinidad and for all the vendors' smiles and shouting X spotted three men pretending to loiter casually around his stall with their hands on concealed weapons and their eyes on the crowds. The chironja was sweet and ferociously citrusy, it stung his tongue and made him smile. He rubbed the peel between his hands to take some of the stink of sweat and dirt off his skin before he just dropped it, letting it join the rest of the trash collecting in the gutter.

"X!" Raquelle caught him by the elbow as he reached the ruin of the old Tenth Street Hotel the Reds had staked out as their centre of operations. She dragged him away from the door, into the alley beside the building. Piss soaked cigarette butts squished under their sneakers as she checked the shadows carefully.

"Jesus, what is it?" He asked, glancing back at the mouth of the alley. He stuck his hand casually in his pocket where he found his switchblade, just one of the several knives he had stowed away on his person. He gripped it lightly, keeping his finger on the release button.

"Arturo is looking for you," Raquelle whispered, still glancing nervously from side to side as she leaned in close.

"Shit," X swore, letting go of the knife so he could put his head in his hands. His stomach locked up like she'd snap-frozen his guts. "Why won't he just leave me alone?"

"My guess is because he's a sadistic bastard," Raquelle said, "but it might be because he thinks you know too much about him, or because he's in love with you, or because he thinks your blood will turn lead to gold. Basically, it doesn't fucking matter why, but he's got a burr up his ass about you and doesn't show any signs of letting up."

"Well, Ernesto already gave me work for the week," he replied. "I'm playing security for Tessa's whorehouse up the street. I just stopped by to see if there was a message he wanted passed to her."

"Okay," Raquelle nodded, "that's good. For a week. But what about next week? What about the week after that? Arturo is going to keep spreading rumours and turning people off you until there's no one left but him, and you know how it goes. If you don't work you don't earn, and you can't wear the colour."

She plucked the collar of his jacket.

"Do you want to try to get through Trinidad on your own again?"

"No, fuck no, of course not," X said, hugging his jacket tighter around himself. "You got me out of that, you know what it was like for me. But I don't want to go back to Arturo either."

"Good," Raquelle reached into her jacket and pulled out a tight roll of something, pushing into his hand.

"What is this?" He asked. It looked blank, but he realized that was just a single piece of paper she had wrapped around something else and secured with a rubber band. He looked back up as she turned on her heel and started walking away from him.

"It's a way out," she said, not stopping, "take it. But if anyone finds it on you I'll deny that you got it from me, and I'll stop trying to find you any work."

She didn't wait for an answer, just rounded the corner and left the alley.

X stared after her for a moment, stunned. He had never seen Raquelle act like that, not in the six years he'd known her. He looked down at the apparently dangerous roll of paper in his hands and sighed, tucking it into one of the secret pockets he'd stitched into his jackets lining. There were people expecting him and he didn't want to be late with Arturo still gunning for him and his reputation.

He slipped in and out of the building to pick up the messages for Tessa and his pay for the day before without catching sight of the other man. He got out as quickly as he could and made his way up the street to his work assignment, stopping only to make a purchase from the fruit vendor. Tessa's brothel was one of the cleaner ones on the street, which still left it several degrees from truly clean. But the whores there weren't a bad lot, probably since they had a madam who had their backs instead of a pimp that roughed them up all the time. They greeted him with smiles and a few flirty touches as he pushed through.

"Sure I can't convince you to come upstairs?" Amber asked him, wrapping her arms around his neck as he tried to slip through the door and pressing herself against his chest until her tits bulged. She had to press hard; she was thirteen if she was a day and hadn't filled in properly yet. Her large dark eyes were made up to look smoky and sultry, her cheap lipstick the red of fresh blood. "I won't make you pay."

"It's not the paying that puts me off," X replied, grinning at her and tweaking her nose like an older brother.

She slapped his hand away.

"Don't you have any vices I can exploit?" She asked, with a visible pout. After a moment it transformed into a wicked smile. "Give me half a chance and I promise I can inspire a couple."

"If I ever feel the need to be exploited you'll be the first girl I call," he promised her. "Until then though..."

"Just fat old men and drunks," she sighed. "Tessa's in her office."

"Thanks," he produced a fresh chironja from his pocket and slipped it to her. "Don't tell the others, I don't want them to find out you're my favorite."

"Thanks, X," her eyes lit up at the sight of the fruit and she immediately slipped it into the folds of the flimsy scarf she wore tied around her hips like a sash. When she got that excited over a piece of fruit it was easy to see how young she really was, and it made X sad. Maybe it shouldn't have, he was only a few years older than her after all, but he squeezed her shoulder and pushed inside so he didn't have to see her turn back to the street and start calling out for customers.

He found Tessa in her office, as promised, and slapped his credit chit down on her desk.

"Before you check it, I bought fruit," he produced the other three chironja's from his pockets and laid them out on the desk in front of her. "One for you, one for Ortiz, and I gave one to Amber at the door."

Tessa squinted at him suspiciously for a moment, then stuck his chit in her terminal. She checked his balance then sat back in her chair, doing internal math for a moment.

"Okay," she confirmed, "that checks out. Still, show me."

X sighed and rolled up his sleeves. The track marks on his arms were all old, long since scabbed over and gone to scars. He turned his hands over for her, spreading his fingers to show there was nothing fresh between them either.

"Do you want to check between my toes too?"

"No, I think I can trust you," Tessa sat back, looking satisfied.

"Good," X sat up and extended his hand for his chit, "I'm going to get to work."

Tessa snorted and closed the window on her screen, going back to her own figures and balances.

"I know what that means, you're going to go drink rum and gamble, and lose all your money anyway. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to be happy that it isn't going into your arm anymore. Have fun," she waved him away with one small hand.

X laughed and tucked his chit into his pocket. He headed for the door and paused, glancing over his shoulder. Tessa didn't seem to notice his hesitation, she was absorbed in her own work.

He considered for a moment telling her about Raquelle and her strange message. Tessa was probably the best friend he'd ever had, the only one who had gone out of her way to get him off the needle and make sure he stayed off it. He thought he could trust her, but for all her good intentions she was a Red, through and through. Raquelle had told him the little roll of paper in his pocket was a way out, and suggested it was dangerous.

He turned and went to the backroom for another night of warm rum and manhandling drunks. He expected it to be easy. After all, he'd worked security a hundred times or more, he'd even done it before getting himself cleaned up. If a junky could handle it, it should have been a normal enough night.

But it wasn't a normal night, because that night he realized what was happening to the babies.

There hadn't been any serious altercations all night so the muscle was all sequestered in the backroom smoking and playing dominoes while the hookers plied their trade. He hadn't bothered to look up from the table when Tessa brought the woman downstairs and barked orders for the doctor to be called. Even the screams and sobs of labour in the other room had done little to disturb the tap of tiles and shuffle of chits going back and forth across the table.

That was how it worked in Trinidad, in the houses run by the Reds. Life was nothing to be celebrated, it came and went far too easily for such things to matter and he was used to that. When Ortiz left the little room with a bundle of blankets in his arms and stepped into the bathroom X was too busy linking his rows and columns of numbers together to give it much thought. He heard water run, then heard it drain a few minutes later and Ortiz left the bathroom and went out the back door into the alleyway. He carried no bundle, just a backpack, and when he came back half an hour later he didn't even have that.

It wasn't the first time he'd witnessed a birth in this place, with over twenty five prostitutes jammed into a ten-unit apartment such accidents were unavoidable, but it was the first time he'd had enough of himself in hand to realize what was being done. It was also the first time he relapsed, two hours later in that same bathroom with the faucet of the sink still dripping fat drops of lukewarm water.

"Goddamnit X," Ortiz swore when he came downstairs to dismiss them at the end of the night and found him curled up in the bathtub with blood drying in the pit of his elbow. "No pay for you tonight, acere. I'll get Tessa."

He must have blacked out after that, because the next thing he knew that faucet was running again and Tessa was hurling handfuls of water onto his face. It was getting in his mouth and eyes and he sputtered, throwing his hands out to protect himself from her onslaught. For a girl two years younger, and close to fifty pounds lighter, than he was she could look impressively terrifying as she bore down on him with her teeth bared and dragged him out of the tub by his hair. He cried out as his hip hit the bathroom floor and he felt his left leg go numb all the way down to his toes.

"Look at yourself!" Quintessa shrieked, trying to pull him up and make him stand. Dragging him out of the tub had diminished her sudden burst of strength and he sagged at her feet, feeling boneless, like he was melting onto the floor. She let go and he curled up, closing like a clam shell, his eyes shut against the assault of light and noise.

"Look at yourself! Look at yourself!" She kicked him with one small, sneakered foot and X felt it sink into the meat of his side but none of the pain such a blow should have invoked. She screamed, wordless rage, and kicked him harder.

"Tess! QUINTESSA!" Someone pulled her away, he could hear the squeak of rubber soles being dragged across the floor.

He didn't even try to move, he lay there and listened to the rush of the faucet still running, the chug of the drain swallowing water. He curled tighter but he couldn't escape that sound. He clamped his hands over his ears, screwed his eyes closed until bursts of colour bloomed against the darkness and still it remained, etched into his brain like a holy commandment.

He couldn't say how long he lay in purgatory on the bathroom floor like that, but eventually the screaming stopped and he felt arms encircle him. They lifted him off the floor like he was nothing and he felt air move around him as he was carried out of the bathroom and down a flight of stairs. The temperature dropped a couple of degrees; it felt gloriously cool after the stale, sweat-scented air of the crowded backroom above. With surprising tenderness he was set down on a narrow cot, and strong hands brushed the dirty hair off his forehead, touched the jagged scars carved into his left temple, then the curve of his cheekbone where it jutted through his thin skin like a razor.

"Oh X," a soft, sad voice echoed in the darkness around him, "there's a little bit less of you every day. You weren't made for this world."

It was a tender sentiment from the man who had carried such an evil bundle into the night just hours before, but Ortiz was like that. Everyone was like that in Trinidad, and that was something he thought he'd come to accept.

Tessa woke him the next morning with a bed pan full of piss in the face. He sat up, sputtering as it burned his nose and tongue, then leaned over the side of the cot and puked. Luckily some generous soul had left a bucket beside the bed and he got most of it inside. When he was done he slumped back in the puddle of urine on the pillow. He wanted to move, but his bones felt like they weighed a thousand pounds each, he could barely force his chest in and out with each breath.

"No," Tessa's voice was deadly quiet, "oh no. Get up. Get him up!"

His eyes shot open as he felt hands on him and he saw Ortiz, hauling him off the bed.

"I've done everything I can think of for you," she told him as Ortiz dragged him down the hallway. "I'm done. Do you hear me, X? I'm fucking done. I don't know why you torture me like this, but I can't take it anymore."

"The baby," X rasped. His mouth was horrifically dry, and still tasted of his unfortunate wake up call, but he forced it to work.

Tessa stopped and Ortiz had to pull up short to stop from running into her. She turned slowly and fixed him with one hard brown eye.

"What did you say?"

"The baby," X repeated, forcing himself to meet her eyes. "How could you?"

"Don't you dare judge me," she hissed, raising one hand and slapping him across the face with all the strength she could muster. It whipped X's head to the side and made his ears ring. Tears sprang immediately to his eyes and the world wobbled unsteadily. "After what you did in the pits for Arturo? After you worked in here for almost half a year? Don't you DARE!"

"The drugs..."

"You can't blame drugs for everything, X," she sneered at him, like he was a roach she was thinking of stepping on. "Drugs don't cook themselves up and suck themselves into needles and fly at your arms while you try to shoo them away. YOU do them. You do them because you don't have the guts to survive without them, and because you're weak. And I. Am. Done."

They got to the end of the hall, went down a long flight of stairs to the back alley. Tessa stepped to the side and Ortiz tossed him, gently as he could and making sure he landed in a pile of garbage rather than on the hard concrete. X found himself grateful for that, and let out a dry sob as he realized how pathetic that was. He couldn't find the strength to get up.

"I'm sorry," she said as Ortiz headed back inside. "For this, and only this, I really am sorry. No one is going to hire you now, I told Ernesto why I couldn't keep you here and he told everyone else. But I just... I can't do this anymore. If I'm honest... I think you should kill yourself. Just find someone with some pure stock, load up one more needle and go out in the ocean like you like to do. Drowning isn't supposed to be a terrible way, and I bet it wouldn't hurt too much if you were full of drugs. Don't go back to the Pits. That's... that's all I can say."

She turned and he heard the heavy door close behind her. The deadbolts rattled as she locked them and then there was silence, or as close to silence as there ever was in Trinidad. X closed his eyes. He wanted to get up, to wash the stink off of him and wander home to sit down and think rationally about what his options were, maybe even go down to the beach, but he couldn't find the strength to even open his eyes.

The only thing he could do was curl up in the trash, wrapping his arms around himself. His eyes felt dry and itchy behind their lids, he wanted to cry but it had been years since he had found himself capable of that. His eyes stayed dry, so instead he tried to will himself into unconsciousness, into the pavement underneath him or the ether of un-being. He was sick of this place, this life of garbage and sickness.

At least he was alone, he thought, a moment before that stopped being true.


	2. Fresh Blood

.Fresh Blood.

If you are wondering whether a young warrior will grow to be a villain or a hero give him an inch, an ounce, or even just the slightest touch of power.

- Haereth, Krogan Shaman

* * *

"Poor X," a familiar voice cut into the silence of the alley after a moment, "that wasn't very nice of her."

Adrenaline flooded his brain, his eyes flying open. He sat up, shaking off garbage and tried to get to his feet. The ground was slippery under his heels and he struggled for purchase, his eyes flickering around the shadows. He could taste pure terror on the back of his tongue, more sour than the face full of piss that had woken him.

It was Ismael that stepped out of the shadows first, and punched him, full in the face with all the strength of his legs, hips and shoulders behind it. X fell flat on his back again, the world dissolving into explosions of bright sparks and flashes of darkness. His mouth filled with blood and when he tried to breathe he realized his nose was broken. He managed to turn his head to the side and spit before his own blood choked him.

Ismael was twice his age and over twice his size, broad and overblown with steroid muscles where X was lean and quick. X's world filled with his square face and flat, lizard eyes, and Ismael grabbed a handful of his hair and dragged him out of the trash pile. He dropped him in the middle of the alley like a sack of shit, and then kicked him over onto his stomach.

Boots appeared on the pavement in front of him, new boots with polish and everything. X looked up, following the long legs clad in clean jeans, and into the face of his nightmares hanging over him again. The lean face twisted into a smile as Arturo met his eyes. He had eyes even less human than Ismael, like something not even truly living, flat and cold as jet.

"Long time no see," he grinned, "if I didn't know better I'd say you were avoiding me."

"No..." X moaned, not sure if he was denying the accusation or his own knowledge of what was coming.

"Don't lie to me," Arturo's smile changed seamlessly into a frown and he put one of his shiny boots against Shepard's chin, holding his face against the ground so he couldn't try to wiggle away. "I listen to what people say, that you're spreading vicious rumours about me. I know you don't appreciate everything I tried to do for you."

X laughed. He knew it was a bad idea the moment he did it, even though it was nothing more than a breathless gasp that it hurt to create. The statement was just too ridiculous, too monstrously flawed, for words. The only response he could come up with was laughter.

The frown deepened to a scowl.

"Don't laugh at me," Arturo's voice was deadly, "I told you never to laugh at me." He paused, pressing down on X's jaw with his foot until it hurt. For a terrifying second he just watched the pain and fear play across X's face, he seemed to consider going all the way, pressing down until his jaw just snapped.

Instead, he relented. His foot came up and he turned to Ismael.

"It seems to me that X has forgotten who he is," he said, finding his cool smile again. "Why don't you remind him? Right temple, I think."

It didn't make sense to him until Ismael produced a knife from his pocket. The blade caught the cool dawn light as he bent over and grabbed X's head, pressing it down against the dirty ground.

"No!"

X fought back as Ismael grabbed a handful of his hair, so the other man just leaned back and punched him hard in the stomach, three times, until all the air was out of him. Then he set his knee against his cheek, making it even harder to breathe. The knife came down slowly, leisurely, and X felt a bright blossom of white pain where it touched his temple and slid down. Ismael paused, examining the fresh cut, and then made the second one, carving a perfect X into the flesh, before he leaned back and stood up.

X cupped his hand over his temple, feeling the blood seeping through his fingers. The wound burned, he could feel the shape it made like it had gone all the way through to his soul and left its mark there. He screamed with wordless anger and pain and frustration. There was no hiding from it now.

"I gave you that name!" Arturo rounded on him, jabbing at his prone body with one finger. "Don't forget that! Raquelle pulled your filthy ass out of the gutter and introduced us, but I'm the one that sponsored you and gave you a job. I made you!"

"Fuck you!" X screamed again, trying to push himself up with one hand as the other went for the knife in his pocket.

Ismael saw of course. He planted his kick with expert precision, right on top of the bruise that his fist had left in his belly.

"You're worse that I thought," Arturo sighed. "I hoped that the new scar would be enough, but look at you. You need to remember who you are X."

He turned to Ismael again.

"Hold him down," he said.

Real terror seized him, unlike anything he'd ever felt before. It overrode the tang of blood and urine on his tongue, the pain in his face and belly. He tried to stand, his stiff muscles weak as a newborn and Ismael grabbed him by the hair. X forgot about his knife, forgot about everything. He went for those cold, lizard eyes with both hands instead, missing one but catching the other with his thumb. He gouged for all he was worth, stabbing and twisting with his fingernail. Ismael reared back, letting out a low grunt. It was the first time X had ever heard him acknowledge any pain, and for a moment he thought there might be hope.

Ismael recovered, grabbed his head with both hands and slammed it into the pavement. The world went red and black around the edges, retreating. He was floating in warm blood, his body disjointed for his mind. This was alright, he could live with this. He wouldn't even know it was happening. If he was lucky he might pass out entirely.

Arturo touched him. He didn't know how he knew it was Arturo, how his hands penetrated the red haze wrapped around his brain, but they were like ice and fire at the same time. He could hear Arturo's eager panting as he found the buckle of his belt and fought with it for a moment, like a kid after candy. This was nothing to him, it never had been. It was just a game, a power grab.

He didn't plan it, he never did. Violence simple came to him, divine inspiration smashing out of the blood haze and the pain like a meteor. His foot jerked back, between Arturo's legs and met its target with a crunch, and at the same time he twisted his wrist and jerked his hand away as Ismael's grip loosened with surprise. There was a straight razor taped to his shoulder, under his t-shirt, and he jerked it free with one hand as he rolled over onto his back.

"Stop him!" Arturo wheezed. He was on his side in the slime and garbage, his neat clothes coated in filth and his hands plunged between his legs like his balls were about to fall off.

Ismael reached for him, but X ignored the outstretched hand. He lashed out, hooking the thin blade behind his foot and slicing, going deep and hard. The Achilles tendon snapped like a piece of thread under the blade, the calf muscle rolling up behind the knee and the other man howled in agony as his leg collapsed under him. X smiled, blood dribbling down his chin and pushed himself up with one hand.

Ismael's arm snaked around his neck from behind. The man couldn't be human, his grip was like iron despite the split tendon. X wrapped his fingers around the forearm slowly crushing his windpipe but he couldn't budge it. It tightened, inch by inch, until he could draw nothing but tiny, whistling breaths and soon nothing at all. Blackness threatened again. He could feel himself going numb.

The straight razor was almost useless as far as stabbing went, and he didn't have a good enough angle to do anything but slash at the arm across his throat. Ismael ignored the shallow cuts like he ignored most pain, and X dropped the useless weapon beside him as his fingers lost their feeling. He felt something on the ground and forced his hand to close around it. It was a piece of garbage, but he ran his thumb across it and found it had a pointed tip. The world was fading fast, he put every inch of strength he had into his arm and forced it up and back, aiming for where he knew the eyes would be.

Air came rushing back into his lungs, punching feeling back into him. He gasped and coughed, kicking away from Ismael's grunting, squealing body. He fought his way to his feet and pulled the switchblade out of his pocket, scanning the alley for any sign of Arturo. Ismael gurgled at his feet and passed out, the splinter sticking out of his ruined socket like a naked flag pole. Silence fell over the alley, punctuated only by Arturo's raspy sobbing as he tried to stand, and then a wet, sloppy racket as he puked. He collapsed in the puddle of his steaming sick.

X stood for a moment with the knife in his hand, watching. His brain told him that this was the most terrifying man in the world, in the entire galaxy. This was the man who ruled his entire life, who had made him what he was and put shackles on him that nothing could hope to break. He stepped over Ismael and looked down at the nightmare face twisted in pain, his hands still clutching at his ruptured balls.

X was bleeding from every piece of his face, his ears were ringing, his tongue felt huge and swollen, pushing against his teeth. The details of the world slammed together and confused themselves.

X threw his head back and laughed. He wasn't sure if that was craziness or not, it certainly sounded at least halfway insane with his throat bruised and the head wound making it difficult to think clearly. He laughed until it hurt, or at least until it hurt more than everything already did, and tears trickled down his face, and his chest seized and ached. When he was done he wiped his eyes and dropped his knife.

"Don't laugh at me you little bitch!"

Arturo lunged for the knife and X kicked him, full in the face. His nose splintered, which X felt was appropriate given the state of his own aching face. Blood smeared the toe of his filthy sneaker and pattered down like rain on the cracked pavement. Arturo's head snapped back and he slumped over on his back. He reached up with one hand, groping pointlessly at the air as though there was someone that would help him.

X slapped it away as it strayed to near.

"Let me tell you how things are going to be," he said, kneeling down so he could look into Arturo's lacquered eyes. "I'm going to go now, and you're not going to follow me. I'm not going to see your face, or hear your footsteps, or feel your shadow fall over me. You are never, ever going to touch me again. And if you break any of these rules I'm going to slit your throat and laugh while you bleed out."

He gathered a wad of bloody phlegm and spat it in Arturo's eyes before he stood up. Then he kicked him one more time, for emphasis, and turned to go.

He took a step toward the mouth of the alley and stumbled, almost falling. He remembered with sudden clarity the roll of paper Raquelle had given him and reached into his jacket, extracting it. After a moment he shrugged out of the garment and let it fall with the rest of the garbage in the alley.

He'd never felt lighter in his life, it was like the jacket had weighed a thousand pounds. He relished the invisibility that surrounded him when he pushed onto the street without the colour on. He looked like he'd already been mugged, so no one bothered him as he unrolled the piece of paper and held it up to the light coming through a window overhead. It was a prepaid transit ticket, set to take him from the single operational hub in Tombs all the way across the island, to Havana.

He should probably have felt apprehensive. He didn't recognize the address Raquelle had listed as his destination, and had no way of knowing why Havana would be better than Trinidad. But he'd exhausted his options in the alley with Arturo, the Reds would never take him back now, and Trinidad would never be safe for him again as a result. He made his way through the streets unmolested, he looked like a man who had already been robbed of anything of value anyway. It was remarkably easy to escape after all, the taxi swallowed his ticket and popped open its door like he was any other, normal man making a normal trip rather than a fugitive on the run from the prison in which he'd lived his entire life.

He settled down in the upholstered seat as the car rose into the air. The thrusters rumbled underneath him as they sparked to life, inertia separating him from the poison soil of the city and propelling him into the sky. He turned up the music as high as it would go, shocking his groggy mind as it reached for sleep. There would be no sleeping with a head injury like this.

He became aware of his throbbing nose and pulled the makeup mirror down from its bracket in the ceiling. He probed the tender flesh for a moment, placing his fingers carefully, then twisted and jerked and snapped the bone back into place. Pain exploded, obliterating any thoughts of sleep and he slumped back in the seat with hammers pounding at each temple. His new scar itched and burned, but he resisted the urge to scratch at it. Instead he found wet wipes and antibacterial cream in a vending machine mounted against the front seat and slid his credit chit into it.

He needed six packs of wet wipes to get his face clean, and even then it didn't look normal to him. His nose was still crooked, it probably always would be after a break like that, and the familiar bones of his face had all but vanished under the intense swelling spread across his jaw and cheekbones. His left eye was a tiny slit, he could barely see out of it, and his fresh scar glimmered wetly on his temple as he found his last knife and slit the blood blister, letting the collected blood drain out.

That was better. Not much better, but still better. He settled back and watched the countryside slip past him as the taxi made its way across the island.

He looked up as Havana appeared over the horizon. From a distance it didn't look so terribly different from Trinidad, and his stomach twisted with a pain more intense than anything in the last handful of hours had been. As he drew closer the anxiety loosened its hold. Havana was bright, full of colour and even though it was early morning the streets were flooded with men and women who walked without fear or even concealed weapons. X squinted down at them as the taxi banked sharply overhead and began its descent, coasting over a row of sleek office buildings before touching down. The door popped open and a holographic message appeared, asking him to have a nice day and consider them again the next time he had to travel.

The building he found himself in front of was massive, a work of rippled steel columns and polished glass. He felt decidedly out of place as he climbed the curving stairs to the door and read the flashing holographic sign that lit up above the door.

"Alliance Caribbean Administration and Recruitment Headquarters," he muttered, "Raquelle, you crazy bitch."

He spent a few minutes just standing there, looking up at the sign and wondering what to do next. The idea of going inside and actually taking this idea seriously was preposterous, would have been ridiculous even if he hadn't had twelve different colours of hell beaten out him a few hours earlier. What recruitment officer would sign someone like him up?

He should turn around and go... where? X frowned as his mind churned furiously, searching for an answer he knew wasn't coming. The stupid, simple truth was that he didn't have anyone or anywhere in the world to turn to now. The Reds had been a shitty family at the very best of times, but they had been the only one he'd ever known. All his roads led back to the gutter and, inevitably, the needle. All of them except one.

"Name?" The man at the desk didn't look up as he entered the recruitment office. His nametag read Corporal Silas, but he didn't look like any soldier X had ever seen. He was fat and soft, his belly bulging over the edge of the narrow desk as he plugged faithfully away at his keyboard.

X swallowed his sigh of disgust and sat down.

"My name is X."

"Really?" Silas laughed without looking at him, he was absorbed by some holographic spaceship game scrolling across his computer screen. "Why don't you go slap your mother for me?"

"I don't have a mother."

Silas looked up at him. X had a moment of acute self consciousness as he realized how out of place his battered face and disintegrating clothes must look among the polished surfaces of the office, but he set his jaw as strongly as he could and kept his shoulders straight. His gaze was level, as confident as he could make it.

"What are you doing here, kid?"

"I convinced the woman at the desk to let me up," X replied, "I want to join the Alliance."

"The Alliance doesn't make a habit of recruiting kids. To be perfectly honest, you don't look like you need a recruiting officer," Silas gave his busted nose a pointed look, "you look like you need a doctor."

"They have those in the Alliance don't they?" X asked, trying for some form of rueful charm. "Besides, I'm ready now."

"Shit son, you don't even have hair on your balls," the fat officer slumped back in his chair, scowling as his holographic ship exploded in pixilated fire.

"I have so," X laughed, hiding the sharp stabbing pain that lanced through him as the abused muscles of his stomach seized. "If I show you will you let me sign up?"

Silas laughed, then scowled as he lost again.

"You should go left instead of right," X advised as the ship respawned, "you can trick those enemy ships into following you and get them into setting off the proximity mines."

"What do you know about it?" Silas snapped.

"More than you, obviously."

This was easy. When they were used properly words could be as effective a weapon as sharp knives and bullets, and they could get results just as effectively. Silas looked at him like he had cut a bleeding gash right through his tender pride. He glared for a moment, then spun the monitor around and presented it to him.

"Go ahead, if you're so brilliant," he said with an unpleasant smile, "show me what a great general you're going to be."

It was a standard tactics game, easy enough. He spent one turn familiarizing himself with the controls and died to a smug grin from the Corporal. His ship respawned and he seized control, sending the pixilated ship zipping back and forth through the maze, shooting and weaving with ease. He was aware that he was proving himself and ignored Silas' eyes on him as the score in the corner of the screen climbed higher and higher. When he finally died, cursing a stupid mistake, the screen flashed the 'new high score' message at him.

Not bad, especially with the concussion still making the edges of things blurry and the overhead lights uncomfortably sharp, like nails pounding through his eyeballs and the fresh scar on his temple.

"Okay," Silas grumbled, turning the monitor around again, "you beat a computer game."

X didn't say anything, he knew that silence could be more effective than even words.

"How old are you kid?"

"I'm eighteen," X grinned, "you know how street kids run small."

It might have been true. It probably wasn't, but it might have been.

Silas stared at him for a long moment, X could see him consider calling his bullshit. He could also see the sweat stains spreading away from his pits, the circles under his eyes from too many long nights unaccustomed to Cuba's cloying tropical heat and the stress making his eyes turn yellow and narrow under the harsh light. After a moment he sighed with disgust and closed his computer game, opening up a recruitment form instead.

"The system won't take X," he warned, "it wants a real name."

X thought for a long moment, running over his options. Most of the names he knew came attached to bad memories and cruel faces. The very least of them were attached to victims and disappointments. He sighed, reaching through the tangled snarls of black and red, looking for anything that was at least meaningful. Names were supposed to define people, encapsulate who they were. And X only knew one word that could encapsulate him that way.

"I'm Trinidad," he said finally. It was as good a name as any other.

"Trinidad..." Silas paused, waiting for something. After a moment he sighed. "Surname?"

"Fuck," X shrugged, "what street is this?"

"Shepard and Newhaven."

"Well Trinidad Newhaven sounds like a politician," X grimaced, even the word tasted oily on his tongue, "so I guess Trinidad Shepard will have to do."

"Born on?"

"What's the date?"

"April 11th."

"Just use that."

"Of for fucks sake," Silas stopped typing, "this is ridiculous. You know the Alliance checks for false identification right?"

X, or was it Trinidad now, raised his hands helplessly.

"I don't have any I.D, false or legitimate. I took a G.E.D equivalency test a couple years ago, that's the only time I've ever put any information in the system," he produced his data chip from his pocket and handed it over.

Silas slid it into his terminal and examined the results. His eyebrows shot up as he pulled up the math and logic scores.

"This is... impressive," he said after a moment. "They'll check to see if these are falsified too, you know. They might make you take the test again."

"That's fine," X shrugged again, "they aren't fake."

"Fine, whatever," Silas scrolled down the form again, "not my problem."

"That's the spirit."

The recruitment process was quick. He had nothing to offer as far as family, medical and educational history, and they were all left essentially blank. They finished up with physical stats, height and weight measured on a scale installed by the door, blood type taken by a scanner installed in the desk.

"Eye colour: blue," Silas muttered to himself. He glanced up. "Are you going to keep your hair that ungodly colour?"

X ran his fingers through the ragged strands of sweaty hair hanging into his eyes. He'd forgotten that it wasn't naturally that harsh, chemical red. He rubbed at the black stubble standing out on his jaw and tried to imagine himself without the red he'd been wearing, either on his back, or his hair, or his hands, his entire life.

"Yes," he decided finally, "as a reminder."

"Whatever," Silas sighed and entered red as his hair colour. He hit a few more keys, then spun the monitor around and handed him a light pen. "Welcome to the Alliance, recruit Shepard."

X didn't bother to read the contract, it didn't matter what it said. He signed his new name and took a moment to admire it. He liked it. It was nothing like the rest of his life had been up until that point.

"You're still going to need to pass a physical," Silas warned him, "the doc isn't going to accept hearsay on that wealth of body hair."

"Don't worry," X grinned at him as he accepted the print out of the contract Silas handed him, "I'm pretty convincing."

Silas actually shook his hand before he left. X was startled, it was a ridiculously normal gesture, but he accepted it anyway.

The contract said he had to catch a shuttle to Florida in the morning. He read the contract over as he wandered the streets of Havana, the new rules of his life that were so clean and precise compared to everything he'd known up to that point. He wasn't sure how he was going to force himself inside their lines, but he knew he didn't have much choice.

He looked up. He hadn't realized where his own feet were going until he saw the beach unfolding, the waves breaking on the reef. Swimmers ran in the shallow water, throwing up curtains of spray that caught the light and sparkled like handfuls of stars. His skin itched for salt water and he shed his filthy t-shirt and jeans, running for the clean relief of the oceans embrace. He folded his hands and dove, his belly skimming the sand as he headed for deeper water, and stayed down until his lungs ached and burned. He felt cleaner than he had in years, maybe ever. The water was cool against his abused face, and it washed the taste of blood out of his mouth for the first time in hours.

He made his way back to the beach eventually. His clothes were disgusting, he didn't want to put them on again and just retrieved his credit chit from his pocket instead. It was amazing that it was still there, but then it was likely that no one had wanted to touch his shitty rags. He still had his boxers and shoes, but he could buy fresh clothes from one of the street vendors. He could see dozens of them from his spot on the beach.

He looked up, across the water toward Florida and Spring Hill, to the fresh page unfurling in the story of his life, a story that had seemed very open and closed just a day ago. The sun was kissing the horizon, throwing sheets of red and gold across the sky, and across the water. It was so smooth and calm it was hard to tell where Heaven ended and the Earth began.

Maybe it was the concussion. But at that moment, God, Earth was so beautiful.


	3. Mirror Mirror

.Mirror, Mirror.

A friendship is born in the moment one person looks into another and knows him as he is, sees where he has been, accepts what he has become, and still encourages him to grow.

- Leroy Shine, Human Writer

* * *

For some reason he'd thought it would be easy, even though he was leaving everything he'd ever known behind.

In many ways it was. There was no scrounging for food and clean water, no bloody knuckles and split lips, no cold shadows falling over him in the night as Arturo crept into his room. The days passed in scheduled order, every moment accounted for and put to use. There were no drugs, or if there were he had no idea how to go about laying hands on them. This made certain things very easy for him compared to how they had been just a few months before.

Other things were much harder. The ease of survival opened up a world of things he had no idea how to handle, conversation and relationships that had no prescribed script to follow. Little routines that other people seemed to operate with no trouble were alien to him. Social interaction, laundry, free time and team building exhausted him. He felt like an idiot cast adrift in a sea of chaos. And the ocean was gone, two hours away by transit, reduced to a blue line painted onto the horizon. He had none of the calm escape he had built his life around. Some things were easy, but most things ended up being much harder than they should have been. He felt stupid, and he'd never felt like that before.

His uniform had shrunk again.

It was a ridiculous thought, but it was still the first thing that came to mind when he forced the zipper up and felt the cloth stretch tight across his shoulders. He yanked on his lapels, trying to force some extra room into the suit and glanced at his reflection in the mirror beside his narrow bunk. It seemed like every time he put these things through the wash they came out a little smaller.

He unzipped to his waist and tied the jumpsuits arms in a knot. It was only then that he looked down at himself and realized what an idiot he was.

Of course the suits weren't getting smaller. He was bigger. He flexed his hands and watched the muscles shift under his skin. He couldn't see the bones moving against each other in his arms anymore, and it was strange, like looking at someone else's body. He ran a hand down his chest and felt pectorals, abdominals, latisimus dorsi, his ribs nothing but a soft ripple under the muscle. All the hard bone angles of his body had been softened by flesh, and he became acutely aware of how odd it felt to move. He turned back to the mirror and looked, really looked, at his face for the first time in a long time.

It was bizarre. He had gotten used to the gaunt, haunted look of the street, the blood shot eyes with the purple bags underneath, the grim mouth and hard eyes. The person looking back at him now looked healthy, almost normal. He ran his fingers across his cheeks, dark as fresh coffee, and wondered where the colour had come from. He didn't think he was all black, his eyes were too light, as blue as the sky on the hottest days of summer. He thought there might be some Spanish blood in there, in the aristocratic cheekbones and thin lips. Maybe there was a dash of white in there somewhere too. He'd never thought about any of these details before, but everything was different now. Only the scars looked the same, jagged and brutal on one side, clean and deliberate on the other. He rubbed at the x on his left temple and watched the man in the mirror do the same.

So it was definitely him. Still, it didn't feel quite right. That was Shepard, the entity he had invented with the help of Corporal Silas, the prodigy soldier that was going to redeem the criminal he had been. Inside he was still that criminal, still X.

He turned away from the mirror. It was hard to look at himself for that long.

The door opened behind him and X spun around, his eyes darting around the small room for something long sleeved. He yanked the knot out of his jumpsuit and had one arm into it when his roommate stepped in and looked up from the data pad in his hand. His eyes flicked down to X's arm, naked to the strap of the sleeveless muscle shirt he wore under his uniform. It took in the myriad of old scars, lingered for a moment on the savage track marks defacing the inside of his elbow, then came back to his face.

His name was Daniel Silverman but no one called him that, not even the drill sergeants. His eternally gloomy nature and long, mournful face had earned him the nickname Joyous during the first week of trainin g, and it had stuck with unusual viscosity. If Joyous had any opinion of the name he didn't show it, just shrugged and sighed heavily without speaking which was his reaction to most things.

"Hey," he said, tossing the data pad on his bunk. "Do you want a bigger suit?"

Joyous went to the trunk at the foot of his bed and retrieved one of his own clean suits. He threw it over and fell back, sprawling out on his bunk. He sat up, grimacing, and dug the data pad out from under him a moment later. His sigh of despair over its cracked screen would have been funny if not for the tension thick in the air.

"Can I borrow your pad?"

"…Yeah."

X passed it to him. He stripped out of the tiny jumpsuit and slid into the new one. He'd always seen Joyous as large, long limbed and broad across the shoulders, if a little gangly. His suit fit almost perfectly and X adjusted the cuffs, measuring them off with his fingers until they were just right.

"We don't have inspection today," Joyous said, glancing away from whatever he was doing on X's borrowed data pad.

"I know."

"So why are you..?"

"This is the way we're supposed to wear them," X glanced over at him with a raised eyebrow and took in his rumpled collar and sagging cuffs. He paused, biting his lip as Joyous shrugged and turned back to his work. "Are you going to ask me about them?"

"Nope," Joyous didn't even glance up. "I mean, you can tell me if you want. I'll probably be a shit listener though, there's no reason to expect I'd be better at that than I am at anything else." He sighed again.

X hesitated as he finished adjusting his uniform, not exactly sure what the appropriate social protocol was for this situation. He often felt like that, lost in a world that refused to be reduced down and rationalized in the manner he was accustomed to. He might as well have been on another planet.

"What are you working on?" He had been sharing living quarters with Joyous for almost four months but they'd never spoken so many sentences to each other at the same time before. X knew his combat stats, his academic stats, he even knew that the other recruit was a dab hand at programming, but other than that he was a stranger with a familiar face.

"Tech Academy practise exams," Joyous glanced up at him, "I thought you'd be working on them too."

"What's Tech Academy?"

"Really? Alliance Technical Academy? Nothing?" Joyous blinked at him and pulled up a new window on the data pad. He sat up so they were facing each other and handed it over.

"Ganymede?" X raised an eyebrow, his interest instantly peaked. He hadn't known that the Alliance had training facilities off planet. He realized with a start that there were a lot of thing he didn't know as he read over the curriculum descriptions and academic requirements.

"What are S.A.T's?" He asked, looking up.

"Now I know you're fucking with me," Joyous frowned, "or I would, if it wasn't you. They're tests, everyone takes them and, like, universities look at them before they'll let you in. This is like university, but all they look at are your math scores. Well, that and your Basic stats, but you wouldn't have a problem with that. I can't believe they haven't recruited you."

"I've never even heard of it before," X looked back at the steady column of data marching down the page.

"Well you should take the S.A.T's and apply."

"Do you think I could?" X blinked, "all I have is an online G.E.D credit."

"You can take them online," Joyous took the data pad and typed at it before handing it back. There was more animation in his face than Shepard had ever seen. The absurdity of X's ignorance seemed to have shocked a reaction into him, and he watched him scan the S.A.T examples with interest.

"This doesn't look so hard."

"No," Joyous agreed, "so, like I said, you should take them."

"I don't know," X tried to pass the data pad back, "I'm sure I'm really behind as far as, you know, actual education goes."

"I'll help you," Joyous promised, "if you help me with quadratic hacking vectors. That shit is like trying to learn sign language in the dark and it's on the advanced placement exam. And don't do that whole awkward modesty thing, I saw you working on them during Programming Basics last week."

"Yeah…" X shifted uncomfortably on his bunk. "I still don't know. Jupiter is a long way away."

"Oh well," Joyous shrugged and went to toss the pad back on X's bunk. He paused, his arm pulled back to throw and fixed him with a hopeless half-smile. "I don't suppose you'll just help me with quadratic hacking for the hell of it?"

"I guess so. I mean... sure," X pulled up the programming interface on his omni-tool, "what are you having problems with?"

The change in subject matter seemed to satisfy Joyous and the two of them put their heads together literally, sitting side by side on his bunk so X could point over his shoulder when he needed to. Talking about tech was surprisingly easy. He normally fell over his words, stammering out awkward strings of prefabricated social pleasantries, but with tech it was like the entire conversation had a blue print he could follow and whenever Joyous asked a question he knew exactly how to answer it. An hour later they sat back, Joyous smirking triumphantly as he raised his flashing omni-tool into the air.

"I have a slightly above average understanding of the quadratic algorithm!" He declared. Coming from the master of gloomy sighs it was particularly amusing. Luckily, he wasn't offended when X grinned. He even made a sort of scratchy chuckle in the back of his throat that was identifiable as a laugh.

"So why don't you want to take the Academy exams?" He asked, sitting down again.

"You know," X felt his stomach tighten as they veered out of protected territory again, "Jupiter. It's far away."

Joyous was looking stoic and glum again.

"I'm not stupid, you know, you wouldn't have signed up to be in the Alliance if you didn't want to go to space. Everyone else is itching to get off Earth. We don't have to hug or anything, but just tell me to fuck off before you lie to me."

"Why do you want to know?" X flushed when he heard the angry snap in his voice, but Joyous was as unaffected by that as he was by everything else.

"Just thought I'd ask," he shrugged, "I thought we were having a moment."

X stood up. Guilt and anger smashed together in his chest, constricting his thoughts. Joyous didn't have any right to ask him about personal things like that, they still barely knew each other despite their one successful conversation. The question was like an assault and it made walls press in, until there wasn't enough air left to sustain him. His brain stuttered, straining to come up with a response that could rationalize his sudden swell of emotion. Nothing came, and the silence had stretched to uncomfortable lengths, so he just turned and strode briskly out the door with his neck and ears burning. Small groups of recruits dotted the hallways, leaning against the walls and talking. The entire room buzzed with their conversation, loud enough to make his head hurt.

He needed to be alone. He ran for the door, hearing the whispers and laughter following him until the night air surrounded him and the door slid closed behind him, silencing them.

X leaned against the wall, his legs trembling like they were about to give way. He couldn't catch his breath, his throat had locked up and gone thin as a pinprick. His heart slammed against the inside of his ribcage like it was trying to escape, he clamped one hand over his chest to hold it in and felt his fingers tremble as they dug into his flesh. His stomach boiled and churned. Acid rose, flooding its mouth with its sticky burn. His vision was blackening, tunneling, all he could see was his hand braced against the wall, his nails scrabbling against the steel. His knee gave out and he went down, gasping. It felt like he was dying.

"What have we got here?" The voice cut through his private hell and he felt a hand on his shoulder. It spun him around, tossing him down on his back in the grass. X gasped, air rushing back into his lungs as the fog of panic broke, and looked up.

Emery Washington was living proof that it didn't take a place like Trinidad to produce bad people. He was more than half a foot taller than X and built like a gorilla with a steroid problem, all hulking shoulders and long arms. His meaty face was always twisted into some variation of a snarl, anger and cruelty his sole and entirely interchangeable emotions. At the moment he was grinning, a smile full of stupid glee at the sight of X stretched out at his feet.

"Leave me alone," X muttered, pushing himself up onto his elbows and glaring at the other recruit.

"Leave me alone," Emery mimicked, his voice rising into a whine as he wrung his hands theatrically. "That suits you, Shepard. I always knew you were a little bitch."

"Better a bitch than stupid thug," X shot back. "Don't you have some girls to bother?"

He went to stand up but Emery planted his foot in the centre of his chest and pushed him back into the grass. He was still grinning but it was no longer gleeful, instead it was a brittle mask poorly fitted to his face.

"Why are you doing this?" X asked, searching his face for some clue to the origin of his cruelty. "I've never done anything to you."

"I don't like you," Emery said, as though that was an acceptable answer, and the pressure increased as he bore down on his foot. It was rapidly becoming difficult to breathe.

"Do you know what I did to the last person who tried to pull this shit with me?" X refused to react to the crushing weight that was squeezing the air out of him. He kept his voice light, as though they were having this conversation face to face. His lungs ached as he struggled to inhale, but he kept his face clear and his gaze locked with Emery's piggish eyes.

"Oh," Emery laughed, his hands shaking with mock terror, "you're so frightening Shepard! Don't hurt me!" He laughed again and bore down harder, grinding his heel as he crushed the last puff of air out of him.

X felt the cold intensity of violence overtake him with the numb detachment of a spectator. One hand found Emery's ankle and latched around it, holding it in place as the other curled into a fist. He saw a flicker of doubt in Emery's eyes and the pressure on his chest let up for a moment. He could breathe again and he knew that if he wanted to he could let go and try words again. He didn't bother. Talking would get Emery off his back for a day, and he wanted more than that. He wanted Emery to leave him alone forever.

His brought the fist down on his knee cap, smashing the joint backwards and hyper extending it with a minimal application of force.

Emery howled as his leg gave way and X wrenched his foot sideways, pulling him off balance. Emery went down in a pile of meaty limbs. Air rushed back into him, giving him strength, and he stood up. His uniform was wrinkled so he straightened it, adjusting his cuffs and measuring them off with his fingers until they were in proper order again.

"You fucking psycho!" Emery sobbed, both hands clamped around his kneecap. "I'm going to-"

"I wouldn't finish that sentence," X interrupted. His voice was cold and level, it sounded like it belonged to someone else. "It might make me think I haven't made myself clear, and then I would have to hurt you some more to make sure I got my point across."

"You little- I'm going to-"

X drew his foot back and kicked Emery, right in the centre of his chest to give him a bruise that would match the ache growing over his own ribs. Emery gasped and choked, going silent.

"Doesn't feel so good, does it?" X asked in that same cold, analytical voice. "I know I hate not being able to breathe."

He kicked him again, feeling cartilage tear and ribs shudder under the toe of his boot. Then again, lower, in the meat of his guts.

"You might be thinking of getting some of your goons together," he said as he watched tears spill out of Emery's little eyes and go sliding down his face. "And you could do that, get a couple big guys and mess me up. But it's important to remember, Emery, that I'm not like you. I don't have a family or a reputation to answer to if I do something... extreme. So believe me when I tell you that if you hurt me I'll hurt you back, and I won't care if it's permanent."

He drew back his foot to kick him again, thinking his face would make a good exclamation point to their disagreement. He paused with his foot back and then set it down as his balance wobbled. Emery looked like a child, his nose and eyes running as he whimpered and clutched his belly. His face melted away until X wasn't looking at Emery Washington anymore. He was looking at every boy who had ever lain at his feet bruised, bleeding and broken.

"Just leave me alone," he said, a quiver in his voice, "leave me the hell alone."

He didn't remember turning, but he felt the cold air on his face and realized he was walking away under the darkening sky. A salty breeze was blowing off the ocean, he could smell the brine on it even though it had travelled miles over marsh and dusty road to reach him. He sucked it in greedily, as though it could provide some substitute to the calming sanity of saltwater on his skin. He itched like he hadn't showered in a week, his entire body craving the gentle embrace of the sea.

He hadn't really known he was going to the Recruit Services Office until he flashed his omni-tool over the sensor at the door. The lights flickered on automatically and a smiling V.I interface appeared in the centre of the room, her hands folded neatly behind her back.

"Welcome, Alliance Recruit T. Shepard. Can I be of assistance?"

"Yeah," Shepard shifted from side to side and her blank eyes followed him. He thought that was a bit creepy. "I want to take the S.A.T's."

"The Alliance encourages all of its Recruits to explore the full spectrum of their potential."

"Right. So. Umm… how do I do that?"

"I have several resources you might find useful, I can forward them to your network account," she smiled emptily at him and X felt his lip curl as he noticed that some programmer had actually designed a pair of synthetic dimples for her face. "There are also a number of practise exams available on file."

"That sounds great," X nodded. "Umm… dismissed?"

The V.I flickered and vanished. X breathed a sigh of relief and sat down at one of the terminals provided to have a look at these exams. He realized with a start exactly how much he didn't know. He understood math on a level that was almost instinctual, he hadn't learned it as much as noticed it occurring constantly in the world around him and figured it out from there. But not even the G.E.D tests had required more than a three paragraph essay and the topic had been why bicycles were useful not the nature of truth and free will. Tech Academy definitely put an emphasis on math skills but he checked before logging out and discovered they did have minimum requirements for the other components of the exams. They weren't low.

He sighed, sitting back in his chair and running both hands through his hair.

Joyous was still awake when he made his way back to their room. He looked up as the door slid open and the two of them just stared at each other for a moment.

"I heard that some guys caught Emery Washington outside and roughed him up pretty good," Joyous broke the silence. His voice was casual but his eyes were wicked sharp, they ignored his face and focused on his body language instead, looking for guilty tension or a sudden shift in posture.

"Oh?" X kept his voice airy light and his balance centred. "Is that what he said?"

"Three guys," Joyous confirmed, "one held him down and the other two kicked the shit out of him. He's going to be on bed rest for the rest of the week."

"Too bad," X unzipped his uniform and pulled the muscle shirt underneath over his head. The bruise in the centre of his chest had turned out remarkably boot-shaped, it stood out clearly over his ribs.

"Not really," Joyous snorted and rolled his eyes, "that guy's a bully and an asshole. He probably picked a fight because he thought he wouldn't have a problem winning it."

"Probably," X watched Joyous notice the bruise. They stared at each other for another long moment before he sighed and sat down on the edge of his bed.

"I'm not good at... people," he said finally.

"Neither am I," Joyous sat up himself, and they faced each other across the narrow space between their bunks.

"I'm sorry I snapped at you."

"I'm sorry I pushed so hard," Joyous ran his fingers through his hair and looked away. "You have every right to keep your secrets, lord knows we all have them and most of them don't come with scars like those."

X looked down at his chest, at the constellation of scars that crisscrossed his body. A long gash cut his left nipple in half and went all the way down to his hip, purple and brown against his dark skin. Old stab wounds puckered like craters in the soft tissues of his stomach and shoulders, and the remnants of old slashes stood out like tiger stripes over his ribs and the growing muscles of his arms. The track marks looked tame compared to them, but to his eyes they were the ugliest, the most damning, of them all. He covered them with his hands, pinching the pits that always used to ache and burn when he'd been using.

"I want to take the S.A.T's," he said finally. "But all that essay shit... I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know the first thing about english grammar and sentence structure."

"I can help you," Joyous said automatically, "I got good scores across the board."

"Thanks," X forced a smile onto his face, overriding the twisting pain in his stomach that was trying to drive him out of the room again. "I'll help you with the advanced tech exams, I think I've got a pretty good handle on everything they test for."

"That sounds fair."

Silence stretched between them again as they both struggle to maintain eye contact and failed.

"I'm going to go to sleep," X said after a moment.

"Right," Joyous nodded. He pulled his sheets out of their neat military tuck like he was going to do the same then paused. "I understand, you know."

"Understand what?" X asked, opening his bedside drawer and taking out his toothbrush.

"My dad was in the First Contact War, and when he came back he... was different. He couldn't talk about it, he got angry and violent. The shrink called it PTSD."

"You think I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?" X asked, raising an eyebrow at him. "I didn't know you were a closet psychologist."

"I recognize the signs. Nightmares, avoidance, anxiety, aversion to physical contact... I just thought you might want to know that it's normal. Trauma-"

"I'm not crazy," X cut him off, slicing the air between them with the flat of his hand. "We just worked our shit out, Joyous. Don't do this."

"I don't think you're crazy, in fact I'm impressed by how well you're dealing with it. You'd have to, since you got through all the psych tests and everything. And I'm not going to report you or try to play therapist or some bullshit. I just thought you might like to know that I get it, and I'm not judging you. I don't think you're weak."

X just stared at him. His mind was a blank, he had no idea how to react to such a statement. Tessa's baleful face appeared out of his memories, tinted red by all the blood and the angry words that she had thrown in his face at the end.

"Thank you," he said, to break the silence more than anything.

The words felt strange in his mouth, it was the first time he'd ever said them out loud. It was the first time he'd ever had a reason to.

"Yeah well..." Joyous shrugged. "Whatever. You're welcome. Go brush your teeth, Shepard."

He climbed into bed and settled down, facing the wall. X headed out the door to the communal bathroom. He realized he was smiling and managed to nod a greeting to some of the other recruits he passed in the hallway. When he got to the bathroom he even managed to look in the mirror when he brushed his teeth, at least for a little while. As he rinsed his mouth out he took a minute and rolled the name around on his tongue.

Shepard had a better ring to it than X. Maybe it was time he started calling himself that in his head instead of just on paper. Maybe it could be more than a mask.

Maybe.

* * *

Today's quote adapted from one taken by William Shakespeare.


	4. Semper Fidelis

.Semper Fidelis.

Listen here junior, the Alliance is nothing but a few thousand marines and then eight million fucking replacements standing behind them. Quote me on that.

- General Lee Washington

* * *

"Fuck man, chili again."

"Like you can even call this chili. It's water with a little bit of meat floating in it. It doesn't even have beans."

"Real chili doesn't have beans."

"Whatever."

Conversation rolled around him like the waves of the sea, but Shepard was finding that easier and easier to tolerate. It helped when there was food, the Mess Hall had become his favorite building in the world almost the moment his boots hit soil in Florida. The other recruits, well fed and accustomed to better fare, had a running competition going to see who could insult the cook most creatively but he'd never felt the need to participate in that particular sport. Even the thin chili and grainy cornbread tasted wonderful to him and he was already mostly done demolishing his lunch by the time Joyous pushed through the crowd and took the seat across the empty table.

"Results are in," Joyous said, barely looking up from his data pad. He put his lunch tray down and shoved it to the side, dialing down the long columns of numbers. "89 on the exam and an acceptance letter. Jesus, am I ever glad you made me run all those quadratic pressure tests. The time limits were ridiculous on those things, I never would have survived."

"Good. I'd like your apology for all the bitching to come in a creative form," Shepard said as he spooned up the last of his watery chili and slipped it delicately between his swollen lips. "I'm thinking haiku. Oh Shepard you are, the smartest man ever and so, very handsome too."

"Whatever," Joyous laughed and finally tore his eyes away from his results. The laughter died in his throat as he took in the fresh bruises standing out across Shepard's cheeks and the split lip, still shiny with fresh blood. "Aw man, Emery again?"

"Of course, who else would it be? He shoved me down the stairs after he was done so the bruising would be consistent if I decided to report him."

"Did you?"

"No," Shepard narrowed his eyes at the other boy, "I'm not a fucking snitch."

"You're going to get maintenance duty for profanity again," Joyous glanced around, but true to form everyone was avoiding them. He leaned in and his voice dropped to a conspiratory murmur. "Not that cleaning the shitter is your main concern right now. What are you going to do?"

"There's only one thing to do," Shepard shrugged and drained the last of his water.

"Which is?"

"I'm going to have to fuck him up. I attached a spy program to his omnitool that'll help me track his movements for the next couple days, there's got to be at least an hour or so that he's not surrounded by his entourage. If there's a pattern I'll find it and then..." He shrugged again.

"Do you really think that's smart?" Joyous raised an eyebrow. "You can only push so hard before this blows up in your face, Shep."

"I don't have a choice. The last time he roughed me up I told him that if he pushed me I'd push back. If I act like nothing happened that'll send a message that I'm not willing to follow through and then he'll really be on me."

"I think you should check your application status before you decide," Joyous pushed the data pad over.

Shepard accepted it with a wince. He already knew exactly where he'd fucked up, he didn't need the official report. Still he logged in and found the message flashing priority in his inbox. He opened it, expecting the worst, and felt his eyebrows shoot up in surprise when he saw the score tallied at the top of the column of results.

"Did you score over ninety?" Joyous asked immediately. "Remember our bet."

"I thought for sure that triple firewall challenge had sunk me," Shepard said, scrolling down.

"Don't dodge the question."

"Ninety three point five," Shepard looked up. "You were right."

"I'm always right. You owe me a drink." Joyous drew back a fist for a playful punch.

Shepard shied away from the blow automatically. He wasn't afraid of it, even if Joyous had been a match for him in hand-to-hand he never would have actually hit him, and he knew that. It was just that a touch, any touch, had the power to make his skin crawl, to make him sweat and break down into that suffocating panic. He blushed as Joyous lowered his hand.

"Sorry," he said, "I forgot."

"It's not your fault," Shepard tried to shrug it off, but his shoulders had locked up at the mere possibility of physical contact. He looked away, avoiding eye contact. "All joking aside, this doesn't change anything."

"Maybe it should. A ninety three means advanced placement. Are you sure you want to gamble that in a dick measuring contest with some idiot you're never even going to see again?"

"Who says I won't see him again?"

"Look, Shepard, I don't know how to break this to you but Emery Washington is never going to be accepted into Tech Academy."

"I know that, asshole," Shepard glared, "but that doesn't mean I'll never see him again. I did some research after our last encounter, Emery is a Washington. As in Admiral Nolan Washington, and General Lee Washington before that. His family is going to get him into Command Academy even if his combat stats don't, then he'll get a commission and a command posting. It's entirely possible I'll wind up running into him again, and if it's on a battlefield I can't afford to be the stupid punk he beat on in Basic training."

"Can you afford to get discharged for Conduct Unbecoming?" Joyous asked pointedly, glancing over his shoulder at the table where Emery and his cohorts were clustered, shoving each other and braying stupid laughter. "You might be too honourable to snitch, but I don't think he is."

"Honour has nothing to do with it," Shepard replied, his voice flat. "You're not going to be able to talk me out of this, Joy. I'm not going to let some waste of oxygen like Emery Washington make me into a victim again."

He'd never said the word out loud before, it slid up his throat like an acid bubble and burst in his mouth, burning his tongue. He glanced up and saw Joyous watching him, recognizing the power of that word and everything attached to it. He didn't need to know the full story, which was one of the things Shepard liked the most about him.

They stared at each other for a long moment, the air between them silent as though it was cut off from the rest of the world.

"Alright, fine," Joyous said with a long-suffering sigh, running both hands through his hair. "Being friends with you is more trouble than it's worth."

"What did you say your final exam score was? There was something about quadratic hacking pressure tests if I remember right."

"Shut up. If we're going to do this we're going to have to be careful and bloodless. Brains, not fists."

"We?" Shepard raised an eyebrow. "When did this become we?"

"Emery has six gorillas to watch his back," Joyous pointed out. "I know I'm pretty shit as far as muscle goes, but I also know you don't have any other friends so I'll have to do. And I'm going to need you at Tech Academy," he smiled, "I'm going to make you do all my homework."

"That sounds fair," Shepard laughed, "I guess you should get something for putting up with me. What is this brilliant brains-over-muscles plan you have, then?"

"Oh, I don't have any plan," Joyous spread his hands helplessly in the air between them, "other than keeping you from shooting yourself in the foot, which I'm sure will be a mighty feat in and of itself. I say we go do our drills and then conspire over that drink you owe me."

"Is there a bar on base?"

"There's a guy who smuggles in rum, which is cheaper and therefore better," Joyous grinned, the expression unfamiliar to his lean, mournful face. The prospect of alcohol gave him delight Shepard had never expected he was capable of.

"I don't really drink..." He said, careful not to attach the 'anymore' to the end of it.

"You don't really drink _yet_," Joyous corrected him. "I grew up in a po-dunk south Florida town where there was shit all to do. I'm like the you of drinking, and I'm going to educate you just as well as you have me."

"It doesn't sound like we're going to get much planning done," Shepard said.

"Have a little faith. I'm pretty sure that even blind drunk we can come up with a way to outsmart Emery Washington."

He was right about that. It took them two hours and half the bottle of cheap rum to come up with their remarkably simple plan. It was, Joyous explained, a simple matter of balance. They'd never be able to match up to Washington with muscle, there simply wasn't enough of them to make such a plan feasible. Instead they had to rely on what they had and he didn't, which was brains and hacking talent.

They decided to celebrate with the rest of the rum.

"That's Jupiter," Joyous said as they settled back in the grass with the empty bottle beside them. He raised one hand and pointed, then frowned. "No, wait, damnit. That's Jupiter. That's where we're going to be this time next month."

"Have you ever been off planet before?" Shepard folded his arms behind his head and squinted at the little dot of light, so alike the millions of others turning slowly overhead and yet so different to him now. It was hard to imagine that he was actually going to go there.

"Just once. My parents took me to Zegema for a vacation when I was twelve."

"What was it like?"

"Tourist-y," Joyous shrugged, "it was a resort more than anything, we never left the hotel grounds. It was a lot like Earth, except the sand was purple and all the plants looked weird. Oh, and there was this bioluminescent plankton in the water so the ocean glowed at night."

"Really?" Shepard sighed. "That's... disappointing."

"I know. I was expecting this big adventure, but it was pretty boring. I spent a lot of time watching vids in the room."

"Damn."

"Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. All I want to do is get off this rock, and it's not because I want to explore or fight for humanity or any of that recruitment flyer garbage. I... just want something different. Completely different," Shepard sighed again, his disappointment palpable. "I'm so sick of this planet, Joy. I'm sick of all the petty greed and cruelty and human bullshit. I'm sick of people. Except you."

Joyous was quiet for a long time, the two of them just staring at the stars.

"What happened to you, Shepard?" He asked, finally. "I know I shouldn't ask, blame it on the liquor, but I just can't let the question go. Where did you come from?"

"The worst place on Earth, or at least the worst place I've ever seen," Shepard replied. He desperately wanted to be honest, Joyous deserved that much from him at least after everything he'd done, but the words stuck in his throat like tar. "I have these flashbacks sometimes, and it's like the whole planet is shrinking in around me. Anything familiar and it's like I'm right back there... on the streets. I can't breathe here, there's not enough air."

"There's no more air in space, Shep. There's actually less of it, since we have to bring it all with us whenever we go anywhere," Joyous was looking at him. "You can run away from Earth, but your past is always going to be a part of you. It made you who you are and, I don't know, it seems like it made you pretty strong. That's good isn't it?"

"Not good enough to be worth it," Shepard replied, his voice darkening as memories threatened to overtake him again. "Jesus, I can't wait to get up there. I'm never going to come back, either. There's nothing for me here."

"I'll be here," Joyous said, hitting him lightly on the arm with the back of his hand. He froze as he realized what he'd done, his face going pale under the starlight. "Fuck, man, I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Shepard rubbed his arm on instinct, but he'd barely even flinched. His skin wasn't even crawling. "I'm pretty drunk. Maybe that's all it takes."

"Yeah," Joyous sighed with relief, "rum is great."

"Totally."

Shepard found Jupiter again, cut it out of the sky with his eyes like he could will himself there with his mind alone. The stars looked very different all of a sudden, real in a way that Earth wasn't. The buildings silhouetted against the sky, the grass under his back, the wind on his face, it was all meaningless. The only thing that mattered was getting up, into the sky.

That, and taking care of Emery.

"We should head in and sleep this off," he said, pushing himself off his back, "we've got a bunch of programming to do tomorrow morning, after all."

"Right," Joyous followed his lead and the two of them staggered to their feet. He swayed dangerously as he tried to take a step. "I don't know if I'm going to make it all the way back."

"Come here," Shepard wasn't much better, he grabbed his arm and pulled him close, looping his arm around his shoulders. After a moment of shock, Joyous copied him.

"You never stop surprising me," he said.

"Good. Just don't expect me to put out."

"Gross," Joyous laughed, leaning hard on him. "Well... no, it's gross."

Shepard laughed and the two of them set out, leaning against each other on their treacherous journey back to the dorms.

It was shocking to remember that the next morning, when woke up sober with his anxieties intact. He went and took a shower, it was light and lukewarm but he stayed under for a long time letting the clean water rush over him. He had been filthy when he arrived at Basic, the water had run brown through three layers of hard soap. He'd had fleas. Their bites putrified all over him, and he had scratched at them like a dog. Shepard loved being clean, he would have taken three showers a day if he could.

He shuddered and turned the water off, then he trimmed his hair and nails and flossed his teeth, avoiding eye contact with his reflection in the mirror. His new uniforms were three sizes bigger than his first ones and they fit perfectly. He spent ten minutes measuring cuffs, smoothing down seams and adjusting zippers. He felt looked like himself again, or at least like the person he wanted to be. He looked like a soldier.

He still felt dirty. Joyous' innocent touch lingered on his skin like oil. Shepard shifted uncomfortably and turned away from the mirror. He felt his heart flutter and his breath hitched in his throat until he braced his hand against the wall and closed his eyes. He grabbed hold of his vibrating thoughts and started to count, multiplying up by seventeen.

17. 289. 4,913. 83,521. 1,419,857. 24,137,569. 410,338,673. 697,575,4... 49?

Shepard frowned as he stumbled.

697,575,441.

He opened his eyes as his heartbeat steadied and his breathing grew even. He straightened up, readjusting his uniform and running his fingers through his clean hair.

118,587,876,497.

He counted his entire way back to the dorm, until he had to strain to process the numbers. It felt good to think so hard, like he was stretching his brain the same way he stretched his muscles before he ran an obstacle course. The code he and Joyous had planned required flawless execution, or it would end up getting them discharged instead of Emery. When Shepard sat down on his bunk and pulled out his data pad he was hungry for it.

It took them two days to get the code right, and then Joyous insisted they run tests on it for a week straight. After that it was almost too easy, it took barely an hour for their plan to run its course.

Joyous was ever cautious and took pains to be in the middle of basic drills when it went down, but Shepard couldn't stay away. He'd been assigned maintenance duties in the detention block before, and he knew exactly where a thick pool of shadows gathered on the cat walk above the cells. He had been hiding there for ten minutes when Major Ingles marched Emery in.

The Major was probably the only man on base without a tan, his pale skin shot through with the purple and red veins of extensive alcohol use. Shepard had never seen him before, except at a distance, and he took in the rumpled, sweat stained uniform and sagging jowls with a grimace, an acid wash coating the back of his tongue as his stomach twisted. Was that what being in the Alliance was like?

"I don't understand," Emery moaned. He was sweating, Shepard could see the fat droplets catch the overhead lights, they sparkled as they ran down his face.

"I don't understand it either," Major Ingles sighed like the weight of the world was grinding down on his shoulders. He opened one of the cells and directed the two guards flanking Emery to escort their charge into it. "I have to get in contact with my superiors and see about setting up a court martial. This is all I need."

Emery let himself be led into the cell. There wasn't an ounce of fight left in him, he lumbered along in shock, his mouth open and his hands balled into fists against his chest. Without cohorts at his back and a smirk on his face he looked five years younger, a big stupid child crammed into a soldier's body.

Shepard bit his lip. He could feel the scar Emery's knuckle had left between his teeth, a tender white line that split his bottom lip. His hands were clean, or at least they weren't bruised and covered in blood. He hadn't let himself slip backwards into violence, but he still felt like he had broken the other boy, still felt like he was standing over him in the aftermath of a fight. He had destroyed Emery's life, the only difference was he hadn't done it with his fists.

"Enjoying the show?"

The voice made him jump, his heart slamming up his throat into his mouth. Ingles and the guards didn't hear, they were already out the door, and Emery had retreated to the back of his cell, immersed in his private catastrophe. Shepard turned away from the sight to find a uniformed soldier watching him, a tall black man with a crooked smile on his craggy face.

"Sir?" Shepard reacted on instinct, drawing his shoulders back and his heels together, his hand snapping up to his forehead in salute. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"I don't think that's been true of anything in your life, Recruit Shepard. At ease."

Shepard relaxed as much as he could, folding his hands neatly in front of him and tilting his chin up in subtle defiance. He was resolute, he would reveal nothing and if all else failed he would at least make sure Joyous' name stayed out of it. He kept his features schooled, his face smooth and calm as a tide pool.

"Good," the soldier nodded and took a step forward. He leaned casually against the safety railing and looked down at Emery pacing his cell. "We're going to have a conversation now, and it'll go much better for you if you don't even try to play me the way you did these other assholes. I'm not like the other uniforms you've met around here, consider me bullshit proof."

The tag on his chest, neatly stitched under layers of citation bars, said his name was Anderson. The bars on his collar said he was a lieutenant commander and his insignia that he was Alliance Marine. His muscles rippled under the thick fabric of his uniform, the hands folded lightly over the steel rail were long fingered and strong, covered in a thick layer of calluses. He was the first man who actually looked like a soldier that Shepard had ever seen outside of a vid.

Shepard didn't join Commander Anderson at the railing like he was clearly expected to. He kept his back straight, his body humming with energy for the coming confrontation. He was ready for anything.

Anderson just stared at him for a moment.

"If you're eighteen," he said, turning away again, "then I'm the Queen of France."

Shepard didn't say anything.

"Well?"

"You said no bullshit," Shepard shrugged, "so here's me not bullshitting you."

Anderson smiled.

"Good. That's good. So why don't you tell me about Washington?"

"Emery H. Washington was born in Miami to a strong military family. Blond, brown eyes, two point zero five meters, ninety-nine point seven kilograms." Shepard paused, "do you want his combat stats? Academic stats? One of those is a really short list."

Anderson laughed.

"I see you've studied your enemy."

"I don't have any enemies," Shepard said, keeping his voice light. "I study everyone."

"Maybe you think everyone's your enemy," Anderson didn't miss a beat. "That's not what I was asking for, though. You must have a personal opinion about him, and that's what I'm interested in. Permission to speak freely, Shepard. Let's hear it."

"Emery Washington is a piece of shit," Shepard was surprised by the emotion in his own voice. He paused, taking hold of himself, forcing the angry flush away from his face. "He's a violent bully and an idiot who relies on his name to open doors instead of his skills."

"Washington is a good soldier."

"He's good at shooting things and following orders. That's not the same thing."

"I know certain people who would disagree with that sentiment," Anderson said, his voice tight. A flicker of something played across his face, furrowing his brow and drawing his lips down into a grimace.

"Then those people are just as stupid as he is."

"Right," Anderson nodded and rubbed at his jaw. His face was unreadable, his dark eyes wandered between Shepard and Emery in his cell below.

"What's going to happen to him?" Shepard asked, to break the silence more than anything else. He was used to being scrutinized, drill sergeants combed over him inch by inch every time he ran a drill or an obstacle course, but Anderson was different. He saw the immaculate uniform, the precisely trimmed hair, the straight back and the scars on his temples, but that wasn't what he was really looking at.

"I doubt that the brass will press any real charges, but he'll probably be discharged and banned from reapplying for service."

"That's not so bad."

"Isn't it?" Anderson's voice was light but his voice cut. "You know he's from a military family, how do you think this is going to affect the rest of his life?"

"He deserves it," Shepard replied, his voice getting hot again.

"Oh right, of course," Anderson nodded. "Because he's a bully, right?"

"He's the one that broke the rules," Shepard shrugged, and rubbed at his side, remembering the vicious bruises that had only just finished fading away. It wasn't exactly a lie, he just hadn't said precisely what rules had been broken.

"We all have to accept the consequences of our actions," Anderson agreed. He straightened up, looking away from Emery, and faced Shepard directly. "I'll have your transfer changes filed."

"What?" Shepard felt himself go cold, like he had been plunged into an ice bath. His jaw fell open and he heard his own voice like it belonged to someone else, brittle and thin as it sliced the air.

"Yeah. Your application to Tech Academy was very impressive, Shepard, it sparked a lot of interest. You probably don't know this, but certain outfits really enjoy poaching high potential uniforms off of each other. We all have our success stories, but the Marines have always sort of prided ourselves on always managing to get the best of the best. That's you. I've been watching you for the last couple days and you've impressed me, so you're in."

"But..." Shepard hesitated.

"But?"

"I was looking forward to Tech Academy."

"Sorry, son. If it makes you feel better, I have a feeling you would have been a shitty engineer. They're not front lines material, they don't get to see the fruits of their labours up close and personal."

They both looked down at Emery in his cell, and when their eyes met again Shepard knew he was trapped. His presence here, while not enough to be damning in and of itself, would surely arouse suspicion were Anderson to report it. At the very least it would give Emery's flunkies a clean target to focus his vengeance on. Being trapped was not a feeling he enjoyed.

"Alright," Shepard said with a final sigh. "I'll do it. I just have one question."

"I wasn't really asking," Anderson laughed, "but go ahead and ask your question."

"Why me?" Shepard locked eyes with Anderson, keeping his back and shoulders straight. "And my own bullshit detector is pretty well developed so don't say it was just exam scores.

"Of course not. Your Basic scores came into play too, your friend Silverman wouldn't make a very good marine and he's almost as smart as you are."

"Silverman?" Shepard blinked. "Oh! Right, Joyous. No, I guess he wouldn't."

"So that's part of it. But really, if I'm being honest... it's just you, Shepard. The way you talk, the way you hold yourself, that look in your eyes. Recruits these days... for the most part they're all the same, all like Emery. They all come from the same social bracket, they all think the same way, and they all have the same perception. You're different, you see the world differently, and any outfit needs to have a little of that to make it strong."

"Okay," Shepard nodded. He had gotten used to anything in a uniform lying to him, the Alliance might have held honesty up as one of their founding virtues but Shepard had yet to see anyone of them live up to it. Until Anderson, at least.

"Okay?"

"Yeah. You didn't bullshit me, so okay."

"I never actually asked you if you agreed to any of this, you realize?"

"Do you really think you can force me to do anything I don't agree to?" Shepard set his jaw. "I put a cap on that stage of my life, I'm done with it."

"I get that," Anderson nodded, "so I'm glad you're on board. Though, just for the record, I do think I could force you if I really wanted to. Now go get your shit, you're taking off for Arcturus Station in three hours."

* * *

Today's quote adapted from one taken from Sebastian Junger.


	5. Over the Moon

.Over the Moon.

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed about themselves can hope to escape it.

- Abernox, Volus mystic

* * *

"Being a Marine is hard," Shepard whined.

"Aw, muffin," Joyous said, his voice sweet enough to rot teeth, "are you having a tough time of it?" He buzzed for a moment, the communications link fraying into a garbled mass of pixels and white noise as he laughed. When it stabilized a moment later he was back to his mournful self, long faced and sad eyed in holographic orange. "Not that I can really talk. Goddamn Shepard, I've been forced to figure shit out on my own out here. How could you do this to me?"

"I should have told Anderson to fuck himself," Shepard moaned in agreement, curling up into a ball with his knees against his chest. "I feel like a plastic bag stuffed with ground beef."

"You look like one too."

Zero Gravity Manoeuvres was his last class of the day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and it reduced every muscle into a jelly balloon over its three hour duration. Shepard felt like he was oozing into the mattress, his eyelids heavy as concrete every time he blinked. He propped himself up with one elbow to ward off sleep, shaking his head.

"What are you learning about?"

"Jesus man," Joyous sighed, "don't you ever stop? I was talking to one of the recruits here who washed out of Marine training and he said no one takes as many units as you are. He took half and still burnt out."

"I can handle it," Shepard yawned.

Marine training had been completely different than anything he'd suspected. His image of the Marines was cultivated from vids and recruitment ads, muscle bound and lantern jawed pillars of dramatic lighting. He'd expected physical drills, target practise and unit tactics, and there was a lot of that. Standard tactics and combat training encompassed the majority of the curriculum but two days a week they took specialized courses to 'better equip them for operations in the diverse universe.'

Shepard hadn't understood that sentence the first time it was laid in his lap, too much thought and effort had been put into sapping the meaning out of the words. When he had signed up for everything he could, filling every hour allocated for classes and all of the advanced study and electives as well, he had discovered what they meant. The academic classes were about understanding the galaxy, about why things worked the way they did and, best of all, they were about aliens. Shepard soaked up xeno linguistics, xeno political sciences, xeno biology, xeno-technology applications and galactic history, with a chaser of anti-turian hand-to-hand and command curriculum prep classes to occupy his evening hours.

Just thinking about it hurt, his brain was as sore as the rest of him. It was being abused just as hard.

"I'm sure you can handle it," Joyous said slowly, "the question is should even try. It wouldn't hurt for you to talk to someone that isn't me once in a while."

"I just need to adjust. That's all any situation is, knowing what's being demanded of you and adjusting until you've mastered it. That's all I need to do..." He trailed off as another huge yawn passed through him.

"Totally not what I was talking about. Have you made any friends?"

"What do you think?" Shepard rolled his eyes. "You're the only one dumb enough to put up with me, just accept that."

"Yeah right. If I accept that it means I have to accept that you're probably going to keep talking to me. I've served my purpose, just forget about me and find new, cooler friends like a normal person," Joyous forced a smile onto his face. His was not a face made for such things, anything but a purely genuine grin twisted his long features into a ghoulish mask.

"Stop," Shepard waved a hand vaguely in the direction of his screen, "if I didn't have you I think I'd forget how to talk. It's good to see that my morose fatalism has already worn off on you."

"Your morose fatalism? Like you've got it copyrighted? Please, Shepard, do you think I would have been able to listen to your bitching for so long if I didn't have my own host of terrible insecurities to deal with?" He was quiet for a moment, looking at something beyond the scope of his own camera. "I don't have a lot a friends who've, you know, bothered to stick around. After my mom died pretty much everyone I ever knew..." He shrugged. "That's why I ended up joining the Alliance in the first place. There was nothing for me at home, and I was dumb enough to fall for recruitment ads."

"Whatever, those people are assholes," Shepard replied, his voice as fierce as he could make it through the cottony clouds of sleep encroaching on him.

"No, we're the assholes, that's why they leave."

"Shut up. You're great," he yawned again and heaved a sigh, letting his head fall back to his pillow. "I need to sleep now."

"Right, I believe that. Drop a couple classes, Shepard. Meet some friends. Stop being such a fucking loser all the time."

"Don't bully me. Send me your Tech Academy notes."

"No. If I send you my notes you will actually kill yourself. Good night."

"Fucking bastard. Night."

He meant to get up to change and set his alarm. Joyous' face vanished from his holographic screen and he put the computer on the floor beside his bed. He settled back, just for a moment, but then he blinked and he was gone.

"SHEPARD!"

He woke hours later to the sour taste of unbrushed teeth coating his tongue and a hand on his shoulder, shaking him so hard his teeth were rattling. His stomach twisted and he felt his breath hiccup in his throat, threatening to choke him.

"JESUS!" He slapped the hand away, fighting the instinct cultivated by years on the streets that urged him to leap onto his opponent in a storm of teeth and elbows. He blinked, dazzled by the sudden rush of light and consciousness, and squinted up at the man leaning over his bed.

"Forbes," he sighed, rubbing at his arm where the other recruit had touched him, "don't touch me."

"Sorry," Forbes raised an eyebrow at him. "You missed linguistics, and tech app. I just thought I should make sure you weren't dead in here."

"What? Shit!" Shepard pushed himself upright and stood, shaking the clinging tendrils of sleep away as he searched out his boots. "Fuck. Goddamn it."

"Hey, don't worry about it," Forbes raised his hands between them like he was trying to gentle a snarling dog. "I've got notes."

"Thanks," Shepard took a deep breath, calming himself down. "I can't believe I got this far being so unbelievably stupid. Two whole classes..." He shook his head and muttered curses as he hit the solid state footlocker under his bed with one ankle. The smooth surface produced a drawer with a hiss and sudden blossom of orange light and Shepard found a fresh uniform.

"It's just two classes," Forbes was smiling a condescending little smile that Shepard hated immediately.

"It was still stupid."

"You're just tired," Forbes smiled, "everyone's struggling."

"Right," Shepard rolled his eyes, "did anyone else sleep through class?"

"Half the people there are sleeping with their eyes open," Forbes grinned, "have you heard Bines try to use a formal tense in Asari? It's like listening to a dove being eaten by a garbage disposal." Forbes laughed at his own joke and paused. He looked Shepard up and down from the corner of his eye and then looked away, with exaggerated calm, one hand on his hip. "You know... I think I could help you out."

"Yeah, you can talk me through your notes over lunch," Shepard replied, kicking out of his wrinkled uniform and pulling on the fresh one.

"Not what I was talking about," Forbes pushed past him and opened his own footlocker. He rummaged in the back for a moment and produced a thin plastic envelope that he passed over with a sly smile.

"What is this?" Shepard asked, turning it over in his hand.

It was a syringe.

The world froze for a moment. The thing sat in his hand like a death sentence, the weight of it made his arm tremble. The world came to a screaming halt, boiling down to the moment, to the stale recycled air moving through his lungs, the frantic pulsing of his heart and the ache in his veins, screaming over his more cohesive thoughts. He hadn't felt anything so visceral and intense since he'd left Trinidad, and for a moment he could taste blood and smog in the back of his throat, feel the hot, clammy air on his skin. Havana hadn't been far enough, Florida hadn't been far enough, and in that moment, standing on a space station built into the moon of a planet over six hundred thousand kilometers away, Jupiter wasn't far enough away either. Joyous had been right all along, he was never going to get away from Trinidad. It was in him like dry rot, festering at his core.

That's wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was he didn't even know what was in the needle, but he wanted it with an intensity he'd never felt for anything else in the galaxy.

"It'll help you focus," Forbes said, his voice smooth and soothing. "Or I've got some stuff that'll help you relax. You look like you could use either one."

He was still holding the syringe between them, frozen like he was holding a venomous snake. His mouth was dry, he had to work his tongue against his teeth a couple times before he could speak. It gave him a second to think, and he rarely needed more than that.

"I don't want it," he said, and it was almost true.

Forbes looked down, at Shepard's arm stretched out between them with the elbow turned up. The tract marks were covered by the sleeve of his uniform, but they both knew exactly what he was looking at.

"Yes you do," he said with another condescending smile. And that was the truth. "Keep it, if you really don't want it you can just throw it away. I'll send you my notes. You've got all lunch hour to try to catch up."

With one last grin Forbes left him alone, still holding out the syringe. He stood there for a while longer, staring at it. It felt like if he moved it would break whatever spell stopped him from rolling up his sleeve and searching out a vein the moment he saw it. When he couldn't stand it any longer he finally let his arm fall back to his side, the little glass cylinder hard and cold in his fist.

He didn't remember walking to the maintenance hut, even though it was on the other side of the facility. It wasn't really a hut, just a room full of buggy hardware and broken tools that weren't important enough to fix but hadn't yet been stripped for parts. It had the honour of being the most private place on Arcturus Station, or at least the most private and still oxygenated one. It wasn't important enough to warrant surveillance and not well known enough to house a constant stream of fucking and drinking like most other camera-free areas on the station. It was the perfect place to shoot up.

He stopped outside the door, feeling like he had been hooked behind the head and slammed back into his body after walking there in a trance. He could feel the syringe in his pocket. It was unnaturally heavy, he couldn't move with all that weight bearing down on him. His fingers twitched, his skin crawled, his veins ached. He raised his hand, dropped it, and raised it again. He hit the holopad and the door slid open.

The maintenance hut yawned like a hungry black mouth for a moment, the lights flickering from their long sleep. They buzzed to life, throwing curtains of washed out light across the piled garbage. He stepped in and heard the door slide closed behind him. Ever cautious he headed for the back, threading his way carefully through the overflowing shelves until he was well hidden. He took a deep breath and decided he wasn't going to roll up his sleeve. A moment later he rolled up his sleeve.

The tract marks were going on two years old, they'd faded, the angry red welts receding and turning brown as they aged. They almost looked like they'd been painted on, like he could rub them off with his thumb if he could just press hard enough. He tried that for a moment, and felt them rolling under his thumb, solid against the softer skin, and his abused veins still screaming underneath. He was never going to be able to wipe them away, they were always going to be there, marking him for people like Forbes to... victimize.

The word cut through his higher thoughts, a flash of silver burning like a meteor through the haze that had enveloped him. He pulled the syringe out of his pocket and stared at it, hyper aware of the smears of oil fingers had left all over the plastic sheath, the dirt and grime clinging to it. It was filthy, repulsive, enough to make his stomach turn.

Like so much else about this situation, he wasn't sure if he'd meant to come to that specific part of the maintenance hut. There were a dozen darker, more secluded corners, but he had chosen the one closest to the disposal, where the unsalvageable parts of the trashed hardware was burnt and condensed into cubes for easy disposal. He pulled open the drawer and threw the syringe down the chute before he could outthink himself again.

He wanted it. He swallowed around that heavy realization. He wanted it, and he always would at one level or another. He hesitated with his finger over the burn button, trickles of cold sweat sliding down his spine. It took a long moment, but he set his jaw and pressed down, feeling the machine rumble under his hand, the rush of fuel igniting, the acrid stink of charred steel and chemicals. The machine burped and spit out a cube of condensed trash a moment later, the syringe and its poison lost somewhere in the featureless carbon block.

He would always want it, but he didn't need it anymore.

Shepard felt his strength leave him, the incredible strength he had needed to press that button. His knees hit the floor and he pressed his forehead against the warm steel of the compactor, breathing deep and heavy. His head pounded until his thoughts shattered into disjointed snippets, senseless and empty. His face felt oddly wet and he tasted bitter salt on his lips. He stayed there for a long time, until his legs started to ache and burn, refocusing his mind.

When he had straightened himself out and wiped his face dry he went to the office and dropped political science, xeno-biology and anti-turian hand to hand. When he was done he checked his omni-tool and realized he'd missed the rest of his classes and, unsurprisingly, Forbes had not carried through on his promise to forward his notes. He stood for a moment considering his options and realized, only after exhausting every other course of action, that he wasn't going to be able to keep doing it alone.

He had never been to the 'leisure' area of the base before. He stood for a moment, looking over the sea of game tables and talking students before he caught sight of the student he needed.

"Hey."

Ramirez looked up at him through a veil of black hair, a look of suspicion plastered instantly across her face.

He'd chosen Ramirez for a very specific set of reasons. Shepard knew she was an organized, methodical and taking all the same classes he was. She was also almost as smart as he was, and almost as universally disliked. The only radical difference between them was that people hated Shepard because he was cold and remote, and they hated Ramirez because she had a hair trigger temper and an unbelievable repertoire of profanity to unleash when it was triggered.

"Hey asshole," she said, "come down from your tower to mingle with the common men?"

"Do I look like the tower type?" Shepard asked, arching an eyebrow at her.

"You look like a sack of shit," she said after a moment of examination.

"I feel like one too. I just dropped a bunch of classes, I couldn't take it anymore."

"I noticed you were missing today," Ramirez turned back to her datapad. "Do you need notes or something?"

"I wouldn't say no to notes," he said honestly, "but really I... just wanted to say hey. And um..." He sighed, running his fingers through his hair. A moment of awkward silence stretched between them.

"You don't talk much do you?" Ramirez asked. She put her pad down and looked at him directly for the first time, the anger gone from her face as she gauged his sincerity.

"Not really. My friend tells me I need to meet more people."

"Friend? As in you have one friend?"

Shepard shrugged.

"Jesus, and I thought I was bad," Ramirez whistled low, under her breath, and looked thoughtful for a moment. Then she shrugged, blowing out a long sigh. "Fuck it, sure. Let's be friends."

"Really?" Shepard looked up. "Just like that?"

"Why not?" Ramirez shrugged again. "If experience tells me anything you're about to get a notification of extra maintenance duties in response to your day of truancy. I've already got extra duties because I hit some asshole in the face with a wrench. It would be nice to serve my detention with someone who would actually talk to me."

"Was the other guy talking when you hit him in the face with the wrench?"

"Well... yeah. But he's an idiot. You're not an idiot, so you should be fine. Probably." She grinned at him, all teeth. "Still want to be friends?"

Shepard took a moment to think about it.

"Sure," he said. His omni-tool lit up, telling him to report for the aforementioned maintenance duties. "Speak of the devil. Do you want to have a drink when we're done? I've got some rum stashed in my room."

"Rum is gross," Ramirez curled a lip, "but it's alcohol, so yes."

"You had me worried there for a moment," Shepard grinned, "but I think we're going to get along just fine."

After that two years passed. It was easy to lose track of time on Arcturus, where every hour of the day was accounted for and assigned a specific purpose. Shepard watched his body get heavy and powerful with combat muscle, felt his mind expand with tech and military tactics. He started recognizing his face in the mirror, the spectre of X retreating before the person he was making himself into. When his omnitool alerted him that graduate postings had been assigned he stopped, right in the middle of maintenance and took a moment to stare up, into the tapestry of stars spread out above Arcturus Station. He realized that he was happy and he would be sad to leave.

It was an unfamiliar feeling, but not a bad one.

"Don't you ever get tired of proving me right?" He asked, looking back down at the circuit panel he'd been working on and returning to his conversation. He wiped his hands habitually on his environment suit and took a moment to admire his handiwork before snapping the panel closed over it and standing up.

"I've been waiting for the 'I told you so' since last night," it was hard to tell if Ramirez was hung over or just her usual level of surly over the comm. signal, "go ahead. Get it out of your system."

"I told you not to set that garbage chute on fire," Shepard grinned as he checked his locator, finding the bright node of light labelled 'S. Ramirez' and heading towards it, his mag boots sealing against the steel with a lurch on every step. "I said 'Ramirez, don't set that chute on fire. I know it sounds like a good idea to the alcohol right now, but it will get us two weeks of contact maintenance.' Those were my exact words."

"I remember," Ramirez replied, muttering curses under her breath that he was reasonably sure weren't meant to be directed at him, "you should have tried harder to stop me."

"You threatened to cut me with a piece of glass," Shepard reminded her.

"Oh. Well I wasn't serious."

"Really? Because the last time I assumed so, and then you cut me with a piece of glass."

"Right, I remember. Well you can't blame me for that, we were drinking fire wine that night."

Shepard just laughed. Lots of people wondered how he managed to put up with Ramirez all the time but the truth was that a little bit of glass slashing made her one of the least physically abusive friends he'd ever had. It was the price he had to pay to find people crazy enough to put up with him in turn.

"Sorry I brought it up. It's just that we got exactly two weeks of contact maintenance, and I'm wondering if you learned anything."

"From your tone of voice I'm assuming your about to lecture me, whether I did or not. Do your worst, two years in this place hasn't managed to teach me shit."

Shepard laughed, switching off the magnetic current in his boots and launching himself away from the horizontal surface of the base, toward the wall of the study hall. He hit it and switched the boots back on, taking a moment to reorient himself, and started to climb the wall. The gravity outside the station was so low it felt almost identical to walking below.

"The lesson is that I'm always right."

"Oh whatever. Let me remind you that you were drunk too."

"This is even more true when we're both drunk. I'm starting to think I should just slap a muzzle and choke chain on you when we got out, it would be way less weird and embarrassing."

Shepard reached the roof of the study wing and turned upright in orientation to the station again. The vastness of space yawned overhead, it had been terrifying the first time he stepped outside the airlock but he barely noticed it now. Ramirez looked up from her own work, her black eyes the only thing visible beyond her visor, and stood. She flipped him the finger, then turned back and started hammering her panel back in place with the heel of her boot.

"I don't think you're supposed to do it that way," he said, when she paused to examine the dented metal, nudging it with one toe.

"Whatever, let's go. I want to check graduate assignments."

"Right. Not that it matters, we both know we've been posted in some piss hole south of nowhere. And we both know that we're just going to piss and moan, even though we could have easily done better if we'd applied ourselves instead of drinking and defacing military property every free day."

"Your optimism is impressive as ever. What's your point?"

"If we start drinking before hand it'll be easier to swallow," Shepard grinned as the two of them headed toward the airlock.

"You can start drinking whenever you like, I want to see if I was posted near my family," Ramirez turned to him, her chin out and defiant as she glared at him.

"Ug," Shepard rolled his eyes, "you civilians and your familial relationships. Let's got then, but stay away from the garbage chutes."

"No promises," he could hear the grin in her voice.

Shepard was grinning himself as he showered and changed into his uniform, measuring out the cuffs with a tiny ruler and adjusting his hat so it sat just right. He spent a few minutes smoothing down seams, checked his teeth and plucked an errant eyebrow hair. When he was done he looked photo ready, like one of the students beaming out of the recruitment ads.

Except for the scars.

He frowned and opened his omnitool as he left the locker room. Unlike almost every other recruit on the station he wasn't worried about his assignment. He already knew he wasn't going to be doing anything particularly important. His jacket was sported a range of academic and marksmanship commendations but the bulk of the file was mostly full of comments like 'stubborn' and 'really stubborn' and 'fucking stubborn.' The Alliance placed a strong emphasis on leadership skills, and Shepard had never been the sort that played well with others.

He was more interested in the findings of his spider daemons, free floating ghost programs he'd fed into the network to collect information on the new Alliance fire wall coding. Hacking secure networks was a favorite hobby and he was looking forward to the new challenge.

"I've been stationed on Minerva!" Ramirez leapt into his arms as the cafeteria doors slid open, her black hair flying in damp corkscrews around them. Minerva was deep in the heart of the old frontier, a planet once on the fringe of human space and now in the middle of a cluster of heavily populated systems. Boring but safe, and it was the planet she had been born on.

Shepard put his arms around her, not really thinking about it, and smiled. His skin was only crawling a little bit.

"Good for you," he laughed, "think of all the cows you're going to save from space coyotes."

"Shut up. Go check yours, I want to make fun of you too," she gave him a shove in the direction of the terminal banks that displayed combat and academic rankings above a scrolling list of student numbers and their assigned garrisons.

Shepard took a moment to study the boards. It was mostly to bother Ramirez, the most impatient woman in the galaxy, but he took personal satisfaction from it as well. If it wasn't for his terrible percentages in unit tactics and team work drills he would have been top of the school, as it was he only ranked third overall. His name decorated the top spot in marksmanship, advanced tech app. and hand to hand. It was scattered in the top five slots of various other units as well.

He wasn't exactly proud of himself, pride was an emotion wrapped in too many layers of complexity at the moment, but it felt good all the same.

"Go on," Ramirez shouted, "drum roll starting." She beat on the surface of a nearby table with both palms, rattling data pads and lunch trays until someone swore and pushed her away.

"Alright," Shepard said, interrupting Ramirez as she fixed the other student with a furious black eye and opened her mouth. "Corporal T. Shepard of... Glut."

His heart dropped until it felt like it was sitting hard and cold in his guts. Glut was further out than Minerva but not by much, an innocuous little place few people would have recognized. The only reason he knew about it was because they had studied the tech that went into their enormous and expansive network of AA guns and mech security. It had been proudly labelled the safest colony in the Alliance, the kind of place that turned soldiers into tech support.

"Wow," Ramirez put a commiserate hand on his shoulder, "that blows, Shep. Safe and high class."

"Fuck damn," Shepard sighed, "who did I piss off?"

"I don't want to claim any insider knowledge, but need I remind you that you hacked into Commander Binet's net I.D and sent out a bunch of randy messages under his name?"

"They never proved who did that," Shepard sniffed.

"Really? Because you creamed yourself so hard when you got away with it I think you left DNA evidence on the data," Ramirez rolled her eyes, "besides, everyone knows it was you. People who don't even know you know it was you."

Shepard sighed again.

"Let's go get shit faced."

"That's the spirit," Ramirez cheered, throwing her arm around him and pulling him close as they left the cafeteria. "It's not so bad. Minerva and Glut are pretty close, I bet we can take our shoreleave together somewhere in between. That'll be fun."

"Yeah," Shepard agreed. "It's still pretty bad though."

"Yeah. But don't worry about it, it's not like either of us were going to amount to anything anyway."

* * *

Oh man guys, this chapter was so hard to write. I'm sorry about the delay, but about half the chapter took most of the last two weeks to write.

Today's quote adapted from William Burroughs.


	6. Higher and Higher

.Higher and Higher.

It is in the depths of winter that men discover the invincible summer within.

-Larana Nirine, Last Poet of Rakhana

* * *

"Shepard," Commander Barrett whispered, "do it, do it."

He was remarkably strong, his hand a ring of steel around Shepard's wrist as he pulled him to his knees in a puddle of blood. A rocket whistled overhead and slammed into the side of a building, throwing curtains of fire and debris over the narrow street, but Shepard barely noticed. He was oblivious to the battlefield around him, looking down at the ground and the man dying there instead.

Barrett was twenty-six. The thought exploded out of Shepard's mind and slapped him across the face as he leant back to assess the damage. His face behind the helmet was battered and twisted in pain but still so young, unmarked by the savagery of time. He handsome, charismatic, smart, at the very beginning of what was sure to be a promising career. Commander Barrett had nothing but bright horizons ahead of him, or he had just a few hours earlier.

Now he was weeping at Shepard's feet, his face swollen beyond recognition, his chocolate brown eyes lacquered with agony. Tears slipped down his face, snot dribbled from his broken nose and when he coughed a bubble of blood burst at the corner of his lips, spattering his cheek. He gurgled and closed his eyes, but his grip stayed strong, grinding the bones in Shepard's wrist together. He never stopped whispering, just the two words, over and over again like a nun after confession.

"Do it. Do it," every syllable was a prayer, they came trembling over his torn lips. The grenade had blown through a crack in his chest plate and vivisected him. His blood pooled around the two of them and spread in the fractal cracks of the cement, a gruesome mosaic of war. "Please."

There was a gun in his hand, he could feel the weight, the heat still radiating off the steaming steel.

"Please."

"Alright," Shepard heard himself say it. He lifted the gun and Barrett gasped at the sight of the blue steel catching the light.

"Not in the face," he whispered urgently. "My mother..."

Shepard lowered the gun, setting it against his chest where his heart was still plodding faithfully against the inevitable conclusion. He shot Barrett twice, then pulled himself free and stood up. He forced himself to look down, to capture that moment with all the attention he gave to tech schematics and battle tactics, burning the monstrous injustice of it into his mind. He dropped the gun.

"This is Lieutenant Shepard, reporting in," he pulled his sniper rifle over his shoulder and checked the sight as he strode down the fractured street. A pair of raiders appeared around the corner ahead and he didn't bother with cover, just raised the rifle and eliminated them both. "Status?"

"Shepard, Jesus, I thought we lost you in that shit show a few minutes ago. Is Barrett with you?" Ramirez was scared, her usual bravado gone.

"Barrett's dead. Where's Florez?"

"Dead," he heard the static snap of automatic weapons fire, mingled with her heavy breathing.

"What about Meridian?"

"Dead! You're the highest ranking officer left."

"Alright," he took that in, his mind churning as he rounded the corner and glanced at the locator grid on his omnitool, his remaining soldiers a constellation of bright orange dots painted over his wrist. There were twelve of them left, and twenty blocks to the nearest outpost, so it wasn't quite impossible. "I'm enroute. Update me."

By the time he rejoined them he knew exactly what they were going to do.

Half an hour later they were advancing on the bridge outpost. The gates slid open as they drew near and Shepard counted his soldiers as they filed past, into the compound. Each one reached out as they passed and touched the scorched red paint on his right arm. No one spoke, and no one needed to.

When the twelfth man was inside Shepard let himself smile, and stepped inside as well.

"Where's Commander Barrett?"

Major Niwa looked like he'd been sick for a week. He was clammy and white inside his dress blues, his eyes bulging as he surveyed the assembled faces.

"Barrett's dead," Shepard reported, "I'm in charge here."

"You!" Niwa laughed, a high pitched, jackal howl that made the soldiers in the yard shift uncomfortably and mutter. "God help us."

"Not lately," Shepard growled, trying to pull Niwa away from the crowd so he could calm the Major down. He pulled up short as Niwa flinched away from him, his hand going for his pistol. "Easy! I just want to figure out how you want to proceed."

"We're not proceeding to anything," Niwa informed him, "orders came from Alliance Command a few minutes ago. We're supposed to fortify the bridges and keep the garrisons locked down until we get reinforcements in eight hours."

"What?" Shepard blinked. He struggled to process that for a moment, it didn't fit into any of the plans he'd already formulated. He looked past the Major, through the link fence and across the bridge. Elysium was burning, he could see the ruddy orange glow beginning to build, hear the screaming and rattle of bullets. "We can't. I won't."

"Those are orders, Junior Lieutenant," Niwa replied, his lips twisted around the rank with obvious disgust. He raised one long, thin finger and poked the insignia welded onto Shepard's chest plate, "What are you going to do about it?"

Shepard tore his eyes away from the burning city and stared at the Major for a long, quiet moment. He was flanked by four marines, each of them bearing a rank that outstripped his own, each of them armed and armoured. Niwa himself didn't even have a helmet on. He didn't need one, he had been perfectly safe just a moment ago.

He didn't think about it. He felt the cold, dark instinct that had guided his hands on the streets of Trinidad come over him, breaking the placid surface of his self control with a roar. He was humming with energy, but he just bent his knees and snapped his head forward and down. The steel covering his forehead met the precise centre of Niwa's face and the Major crumpled, collapsing in a pile of quivering limbs at Shepard's feet.

He probably shouldn't have done that.

"I'm going in there," he pointed past the shocked body guards at the burning city. "Shoot me now, or get out of my way."

"We didn't see anything," one of the guards replied after a moment. He was grinning. "We were with you. If you think we can be useful that is." He paused. "Sir."

"Fall in line," Shepard jerked a thumb over his shoulder and signalled for the man at the gate to let them through. He did, with a salute and everything.

"You," Shepard called to the man who had spoken.

"Lieutenant Calhoun, sir."

"Tell me what you can do."

"So many things," Calhoun grinned at him, and pulled his sniper rifle over his shoulder.

It had never felt like this before. When he'd been fighting in the Pits in Trinidad he'd relied on the darkness inside of him for survival. It was pure id, a wild animal that went for the jugular every time. It was quieter now, subject to the newly forged iron of his mind. He was still in control, still breathing, still thinking.

It was surprisingly easy. Battle made sense to him in a way the normal world never would. It was where he had been born, with blood and pain, and he understood every facet of it. Calhoun was local garrison, he knew the streets better than the attacking pirates. Together the two of them were ruthless and devastating, standing side by side with their rifles roaring. Biotic energy rippled, sending bodies flying, shredding men inside their armour. Then the heavy troops moved in and it was all over. Mercs died in droves, Shepard stopped counting after a while.

They took four casualties, liberated six besieged outposts and killed somewhere in the vicinity of eight hundred mercs. When the news vids got their hands on the story they reported that they had saved five thousand lives, maybe more.

Shepard latched onto that number, held it close and etched it into himself, made it a part of him. Five thousand lives. That meant something, when he needed reassurance he could close his eyes and hold it in his mind like a talisman.

"They're calling for you," General Bad Horse put a hand on his elbow and Shepard opened his eyes. He managed not to flinch away from the touch, he still didn't like it but it didn't seem to have the power over him it once had.

The General directed him to the stairs and Shepard started to climb. The cool, dim air gave way to the moist heat of the Caribbean summer, sticky in his throat. He could smell the ocean on it, seaweed and brine, and was suddenly glad the Alliance had insisted on holding the ceremony in Havana. The crowd was cheering.

Up on stage, with the sea of faces spread out around them, the President was waiting.

Shepard resisted the urge to laugh. Six years ago he had slunk into the recruitment offices here, a subhuman brute with a broken nose and a face like tenderized steak. He wondered if there was anyone in the world who would recognize him as he was now, in his pressed dress blues with his new officers bars stitched ruler straight on his shoulders, and suppressed another wave of laughter as the President of Earth seized his hand.

"It's an honour to meet you, Lieutenant."

Shepard laughed, he couldn't help it, and shook his head with wordless disbelief. Just six years ago. The galaxy was a surprising place.

"The Star of Terra is not given lightly," the President tucked his chin in, close to the mic mounted on his collar. His voice boomed above the riot of the crowd. "It requires a certain kind of soldier to carry it, someone who exemplifies not only the very best of the Alliance, but the very best that humanity as a whole has to offer. It's not given to symbolize an accomplishment, but as the mark of a great and continuing mission."

Someone passed a velvet box to the President and he opened it. The medal was gold and blue, the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. The President picked it up and pinned it to his chest, Shepard felt his uniform take the weight as he drew back his hand.

"So continue on, Lieutenant Shepard. Continue on and show the galaxy exactly how great humanity can be."

The President stepped back and gestured to the crowd, inviting them to voice their approval. Shepard felt the stage vibrate under his boots as they accepted, screaming his name until the sky seemed to shake overhead.

Shepard's chest felt like it was full of light. He could feel the heat of the sun on his skin, the President shaking his hand, hear his voice in his ear calling him a hero. He could feel the voices of the crowd, like each person was reaching out to touch him with every syllable and for some reason the idea didn't make him want to vomit. A hot, wet feeling was collecting in the corners of his eyes and he realized he was grinning like a fool, white teeth from ear to ear. By the time they led him back under the stage and out of the spot light his face was aching like hell.

Who was X, he wondered as the cool air enveloped him again. There was no X.

It made a great chaser to a morning of court martial, even if the whole affair had garnered nothing but a slap on the wrist and a stern look from the presiding officer. He probably shouldn't have head-butted Major Niwa, but he did take a certain smug satisfaction from the sight of the Major's crooked scowl when he learned that nothing real was going to happen to him.

"There's the hero," Calhoun cheered as he entered the bar, after everything was said and done and the sky was turning purple and dark blue outside. He had attached himself to the inseparable duo of Shepard and Ramirez during the tenuous few days they had spent wondering if they were going to be hailed as heroes or condemned as traitors. "Oh, and look how pleased with himself he is. I bet you think you look really fuckin' great."

"Don't I?" Shepard spread his arms and flashed a grin. He still had his dress hat on and the medal on his chest glittered under the smoky lights, blue and gold. "I think medals suit me. I should really get some more."

"Well you're going to have lots of opportunities," Ramirez cheered, appearing over Calhoun's shoulder with a bottle of rum in one hand, "at least you will after the program. N7's get all the best assignments, you're going to be hopping between planets and kicking ass every day while we're stuck jerking off in planetary garrisons."

"More like kissing ass," Calhoun poked the new officer insignia below his medal, "didn't you hear? Our boy picked up a medal AND a commission. He's a career man now, he's got uniform politics to worry about."

"Shepard will just suck cock until he's an admiral," Ramirez sneered, "that's what he's best at anyway."

"I don't give a shit about being an admiral, I'm going to make a bunch of money so I can retire," Shepard replied, glaring at her. "I don't know about you but I don't want to spend the rest of my life shooting at pirates and getting drunk."

"That's a lie," Calhoun laughed, "or, at least, the getting drunk part is. We both know that if you could shoot worth a shit when you're drunk you'd never be sober again."

"That sounds like a challenge if I ever heard one," Shepard grinned.

"You know it. That's at the end of the night though, first-"

"Goddamnit," Ramirez cut them off, "this is so unfair. We've been together since Arcturus, Shep. I'm going to miss you and shit," she scowled, "and I don't want to pretend I'm not going to."

"You don't have to pretend not to," Shepard frowned, extracting the bottle from her hand. She only fought him a little bit. "I'm going to miss you too, you know."

"No you won't," she looked away. "Or, if you do, it'll only be for a little while. You'll forget about me and Calhoun as soon as you figure out how to talk to your new squad for longer than five minutes."

Shepard frowned, opened his mouth to respond, and then closed it again.

"I don't... I won't..."

"That wasn't fair, Ramirez," Calhoun said gently as they lapsed into silence. "That said, Shepard, you aren't the most sentimental man I've ever met."

"I'm a soldier," Shepard replied, his voice flat.

"We're all soldiers. But you're... more of one that most. That's not bad or anything, but people take it personally sometimes."

Ramirez was steadfast, she wouldn't look at him at all as Shepard's gaze flickered between his two friends. He put a hand on her shoulder and she stole the bottle back, taking a long drink and wiping her wet lips on the back of her hand. She still wouldn't look at him, but she didn't shrug him off either.

"You know I... care about you," he said finally. "I really do. I'm just not very good at it."

"Right," her eyes finally flickered in his direction, gauging his sincerity. She sighed. "I just think you're going to leave and we'll write and talk for a month or so, then you'll find someone else to talk about tech and swap war stories with, and you'll have less time, and then one day it'll have been years since we saw each other, or talked, or anything. And then one of us will be dead."

"Wow," Shepard blinked, "you've really thought this out."

"God, I hate you sometimes."

"I'm sorry. You know I'm no good at feelings stuff, Ramirez. Don't be mad at me, not right before I leave."

She glared at him for a moment longer, just to make sure he knew she was really irritated, before her face softened and she took another drink.

"I know. I know that 'oblivious asshole' is just your default setting and you don't mean anything by it, but goddamn Shepard."

"If it makes you feel better, I still talk to my roommate from Basic and we haven't stood on the same planet together for almost three years."

She looked up, her interest peaked.

"For real?"

"I swear. I talked to him just this morning."

"Oh," she blinked, processing that. "I guess we're fine then. But stay in touch."

"I promise. Can we get shit-faced now?"

They didn't need much convincing, especially not when the rest of the squad showed up and everyone started buying drinks. Shepard found himself on his knees with a funnel hoisted over his head, rum rushing down his throat in waves as Ramirez poured straight from the bottle. There more rum after that, cut with round after round of thin Caribbean beer and then for last call a round of tequila shots with salt and lime wedges. When the bar spat them out into the night, or the early morning, there wasn't a man among them that could stand up straight.

"Where are you going?" Calhoun asked as they leaned against the building, swaying towards each other as they both lit cigarettes.

"The beach," Shepard replied. "I need to swim in the ocean."

"Want some company?" Calhoun's eyes were lacquered by rum, they caught the bright wash of orange light as he drew on the filter of his cigarette. Shepard thought he saw something there, and it made his stomach tighten, his guard coming up through the haze of alcohol.

"...Sure."

It was probably nothing. He was terrible at reading people outside of a battlefield.

They made their way down to the beach, lurching through the brightly lit streets and down onto the sand. They took off their boots, splashing their toes in the shallow waves along the waterline until they were away from the main stretch. The beach was still warm from the sun and they spread their clothes out on the rocks before jumping in. The shallow water was glorious, as clean as prayer and salty on his lips. Shepard dove over and over again, until his lungs ached at the strain. After that the two of them just floated on their backs, watching the ripple of light coming off the city and the stars spread out overhead.

"I can't believe you grew up here," Calhoun said after a while, "why'd you ever leave?"

"I didn't have a lot of options at the time," Shepard replied, "and I didn't grow up here, I grew up in Trinidad. Half a day in a taxi, but a different world."

"Still, it's fucking beautiful."

"Yeah... I guess it is."

It had taken a concussion to make Earth beautiful once, but he could see it now. The world unfolded itself to him in multiple dimensions for the first time, expanding before him in facets like a crystal. The whole galaxy wasn't Trinidad, and he felt like he could finally accept that and move on, shake the clinging tendrils of blood, and drugs, and pointless suffering off. Leave it behind him.

Five thousand lives. That meant something, the light it inspired in him was as powerful in its own way as the rotten roots Trinidad had sunk into his soul.

"I'm fucking drunk," Shepard said, laughing. "Let's head in before I drown."

The tide had come in while they were swimming, the rocks were slippery underfoot as they scrambled to retrieve their clothing before the waves snatched it away. Calhoun lost his boots, his underwear and almost lost his pants. He wrung water out of them as Shepard realized he had lost his undershirt his jacket. He dove for ten minutes before he could retrieve it from the murky water.

"It's ruined anyway," Calhoun said as he spread it out on the rocks.

"I don't give a shit about the jacket," Shepard pulled the medal off and tucked it into his pocket.

They laughed at each other as they made their way across the slippery rocks toward the public beach, Shepard hopped down wobbling a little as the sand buckled underfoot. Calhoun followed and almost went down, Shepard had to grab his shoulders and hold him upright.

"You're hammered," he laughed as Calhoun swayed in close and grabbed hold of his naked shoulder. The alcohol had done its most important job and made human contact bearable for a moment.

"Look who's talking."

Shepard could feel Calhoun stabilize, his legs taking his weight again, but he didn't move away. He had green eyes, pale against his white skin, and Shepard could see dried sea salt crusted in his stubble. His heart pitched, his pulse suddenly thundering against his teeth as he sucked in a shallow breath full of the scent of saltwater and skin. He wasn't sure if his worldview had shifted radically enough to allow for this, for the look in Calhoun's eyes as his hand slid up and cupped the back of his neck.

Calhoun kissed him, almost gentle at first, like he was unsure. Shepard froze, his eyes wide open, but he didn't pull away or move his arms from their places, wrapped around the other man. Broad military muscles shifted as Calhoun adjusted his grip and the pressure of his lips grew firmer, more insistent. He pulled Shepard forward, breaking him out of his trance and putting him off balance. His grip tightened on instinct and Calhoun's mouth opened against his own, his tongue teasing the seam of his sealed lips.

Shepard closed his eyes. His heart was still thundering, a wild creature living behind his ribs, but he opened his mouth, tasting salt and the tang of strange saliva as Calhoun's tongue slid past his lips. He ran a hand down the other mans back, felt the muscles contract and pull him closer. He found places for his hands, braced against the body pressing close and knew he could liberate himself in a second if he needed to. He started to calm down.

Calhoun's hand slid down his chest, fingertips tickling his ribs and stomach until it came to the hem of his pants, then dipped just an inch underneath, brushing the first curls of dark hair that clung to his belly. Shepard gasped and jerked away, pushing Calhoun a step back.

"Sorry," Calhoun said automatically, raising his hands, palm up, between them.

"Don't," Shepard shook his head.

"It's just Ramirez told me you've never paid any attention to women so I thought, maybe..."

"You weren't wrong," Shepard said, after a moment. He'd never realized it about himself before, never taken a moment to even ask the question. It had never been one that mattered, at first because he hadn't had a choice, and then because he'd been too busy, too focused and too sober to even think about it. Now that he had thought about it, he realized that Calhoun had definitely been right, about that detail at least.

"So..."

"Just... not here," Shepard turned and headed away from the water, toward the bright streets and neon signs of the tourist district. "Come on."

He had time to think while they found a motel and he paid for a room. He tried to ignore the way the girl behind the counter stared at his scars, relieved for a moment that Calhoun seemed to be too drunk to notice them himself. They followed the signs to their room, not touching, not speaking, and Shepard made a plan for himself like he did for everything else.

He could get through it, maybe even enjoy it. He would like to enjoy it, to put the old pain and nightmares behind him like he had with almost everything else. He was sick of the nausea and cold sweat, the flashbacks of Arturo's hands on his shoulders, holding him in place and crushing the air out of him. Things were different, he told himself, he wasn't the victim here. He was in control. He was just as big as Calhoun, just as strong. He could make choices and think about things, instead of just letting himself go numb. When Calhoun closed and locked the door behind them he knew what he was going to do.

He didn't leave any time for words, he didn't know if he could handle words. Instead he advanced, steely determination in every step, and kissed Calhoun hard, shoving him back against the door. The room was seaside bright, clean off-white walls, cute marine furnishings and a smooth, sand-yellow bedspread stitched with seashell patterns; it felt like they should be getting ready for shuffleboard instead of getting ready to fuck. For some reason that made it easier, it couldn't have looked or felt less like Trinidad.

He banished that word from his mind as they pawed at each other. Shepard pulled Calhoun's shirt over his head and the other man slid his hands down his chest, following the puckered trails of scar tissue. So apparently he had noticed them, and was just... okay with them. Maybe he even liked them, Shepard had heard about that before.

He banished those complex, logistic thoughts from his mind and pulled at the front of Calhoun's pants, yanking them open and slipping his hand inside. Calhoun was already hard, he pressed his hips into the pressure of Shepard's palm and shuddered. He raised one hand and dragged his fingers through Shepard's hair, his eyes sliding closed, and Shepard let him. The scratch of his stubble against his neck, the musky scent of male sweat and skin made goose bumps blossom across the back of his neck.

Shepard grinned as he dropped to his knees on the hideous hotel carpet.

It felt good. The control felt good, Calhoun's entire body reacting to his mouth, his hands, knowing who was calling the shots. He watched his face, he looked like he was in pain, but when Shepard let up a little he gasped and bucked forward, off the door. Shepard folded his forearm over Calhoun's hips and pinned him back in place, the powerful muscles in his chest and arms straining. He saw Calhoun catch his bottom lip between his teeth and his head tipped back, hitting the door with a thunk.

Shepard chuckled around the cock in his mouth and Calhoun moaned, his chin coming down again. He opened his eyes and looked down at him, their gaze locking.

"Jesus Christ," he whispered as their eyes met. His voice was hot and ragged, his gaze intense, "those fucking eyes..."

He ran a hand down the side of Shepard's face and then moaned again, his eyes squeezing closed. Shepard was a quick study, he knew exactly what to do to have the other man gasping his name in seconds, and he did it all with no reservations, no crawling skin, no bursts of dirty panic. Shepard even smiled as Calhoun wrapped both hands around his head and moaned, straining against his arm as he tried to thrust, not bothering to hold back.

It was starting to feel really good.

It was perhaps not quite as easy as Elysium had been, but it was still remarkably simple. Bodies made sense like math, tactics and tech made sense. He could be good at sex like he was good at fighting, aware of his body and mind working together under his command. Calhoun didn't relish being flipped over onto his knees when they made their way to the bed, Shepard felt him tense up under his hands. But he already knew exactly where to kiss and bite and before long the other man was clawing at the sheets and gasping, screaming his name. When they collapsed back against the pillows much later and unwound their limbs, every muscle aching, Shepard took a moment to marvel at the dreamy release he felt, like he'd been holding his breath for too long and just never noticed it before. He wondered how it had taken him so long to discover sex, real sex, and how many opportunities he had missed because of his blindness. After five, almost six, years of celibacy he had some catching up to do.

"I can't believe you just picked me up like that," Calhoun sighed when he had recovered himself. He pushed hair out of his eyes and hit him lightly on the chest with the back of his hand, "you're fucking strong."

"I know," Shepard smiled, listening to his breathing grow smooth and slow. "That was so... normal."

"That was goddamn normal?" Calhoun rolled over and pulled tissues from the night stand, passing some to him. "I can barely feel my legs. Is there anything you're bad at?"

"More than you would believe," Shepard grinned.

They cleaned themselves up, and then both hesitated at the edge of the bed, unsure of what their next move was. The clock on the bedside table read 5:45 a.m.

"I don't think I can make it back to the barracks," Calhoun said after a moment.

"Me neither," Shepard said after a brief, frank assessment of his limitations. He felt groggy and boneless, wasn't sure that he could force his legs to take the weight of his body again so soon. "But no cuddling. It's not my thing."

"Thank fuck," Calhoun breathed a sigh of pure relief and slumped back on the pillow, not bothering with the sheets. "Night."

Shepard lay down with his back to the other marine. He wasn't sure if he could sleep with another person in bed, but Calhoun made no move to touch him. He blinked and found his eyelids slow and heavy. The scarlet numbers glowing on the clock face went wobbly and vague. He closed his eyes, and went out like a light, plunged face first into the black, bottomless sleep of the dead. It had been an eventful day. He slept until noon, and he didn't dream.

* * *

I had this chapter done, so I figured I'd post it right away to help make up for the long delay. Happy double update day!

Today's quote adapted from Albert Camus.


	7. Interlude

Interlude

.First Impressions.

"How do I look, L.T?"

Kaidan took a moment to look the Corporal up and down. Jenkins uniform was faultless, a drill sergeants' wet dream, all the seams lying flat, every cuff meticulously measured down to the centimeter and brushed clean of dust. His hat was perched in the exact centre of his head, tilted at just the right angle, it made his wide, earnest grin look strange against the geometric perfection of his attire.

"Loosen up, Corporal," he said, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket and giving it a yank so it sat more naturally on his body. "We're going to a bar, not an inspection."

"But we're going to an officers bar," Jenkin's readjusted, thankfully without producing his ruler again. "I want to look the part."

"Officers go there to get drunk," Kaidan replied, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. "They aren't any different than normal soldiers when they've got half a dozen rounds in them, that's why they have separate bars in the first place. Can't let the enlisted know that their commanders are human beings."

"Oh," Jenkins looked doubtful, but he examined his face in the mirror and tilted his hat, putting it just slightly askew. He turned back to Kaidan with a hopeful smile. "Better?"

"You look fine," Kaidan assured him, "let's go."

The Terra Station was small, even by the standards of early launch stations, just two dozen docking tubes and a small towns worth of commercial district clinging to the bottom. Kaidan had never been on it before, it was used almost exclusively for prepping ships that had come straight from the assembly line, a clean, stylish station designed with press shots in mind. The halls were spacious for a space station, he could walk down them with both arms spread and not touch the walls, and the elevators slid along the outside in reinforced glass tubes so their occupants could soak in the sight of their planet spread out beneath them.

Kaidan watched the shadow of night crawling across the Pacific Ocean toward Vancouver and wondered what his parents were doing. Probably eating dinner, the windows open to let in the summer breeze coming off the ocean, beers in hand. The summer apples would be coming in from the orchard around now. He wished he'd had time to go down and see them, he would have preferred a quiet night of fresh apples and beer to a night getting drunk in the officers bar. At least Jenkins seemed like a good kid.

"Did you hear about Minos, L.T?" Jenkins didn't seem interested in the view. He'd grown up on a colony planet a dozen systems away from Earth, and the mother planet didn't inspire any interest in him.

"No. What is it?"

"Mining colony in the belt. It got taken over by Batarian slavers and Shepard, the new XO, he took them all out. Thirty soldiers against three hundred entrenched mercs, no heavy troops and no tanks but he went through them like- BAM!" He punched the air with obvious excitement. "No friendly casualties. It's all over the vids."

"Wait, Shepard? Like the Elysium Shepard?" Kaidan felt his eyebrows go up. "I didn't know he was the XO."

"Yeah," Jenkins nodded eagerly, "they're calling it the Second Elysium on the vids."

"They call everything the Second Elysium on the vids," Kaidan replied, though his interest was piqued.

"Yeah, but, you know, Shepard's like a big name. He goes where the real action is. They wouldn't have slapped him on the Normandy if they weren't planning great things for it, right?"

"Maybe," Kaidan shrugged, "sometimes they'll put a famous name like that on a new ship to drum up publicity for a big launch, then transfer him off after a few missions." He stopped himself before he went on to point out that a big name didn't necessarily mean than Shepard was going to be a great commander, Jenkins looked crestfallen enough as it was.

"Do you think that's what they're doing?"

"I don't know," Kaidan shrugged, "there's not much we can do if it is. Just don't get your hopes up too high, you know? Better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed."

"I guess. My last posting was security for an inner systems colony, I didn't fire a single round outside target practise. It's gotta be something better than that, don't you think?" He looked desperately hopeful.

"When the colonies are safe like that it means the Alliance is doing their job," Kaidan said pointedly, "what's better than that?"

"Yeah, I know. But it's boring as all hell, L.T."

Jenkins smiled, but some of the energy overflow had gone out of him. He looked troubled as the elevator reached the commercial deck and slid open. Kaidan put a hand on his shoulder, steering him out into the crowd of off-duty soldiers and engineers seeking food, liquor, and companionship among the businesses. He tried to give him a reassuring smile, but he wasn't sure it took.

The officers bar was called the Horny Toad and sported a garish cartoon of a red faced, panting frog decked out in devil horns above the door. Kaidan rolled his eyes, wondering who had thought that was clever, when the door slid open and slapped him in the face with a wave of heat and noise. A cluster of blue-clad backs was milling about at the bar, shouting and shoving as they tried to press into the centre of whatever action had captured their attention. He caught sight of the bartender looking nervous and hovering by the security call button as the crowd gave out a unified gasp, their shrieks growing louder.

"I thought you said officers were just like normal soldiers?" Jenkins had to yell over the noise as they stepped into the Toad. "What are they doing?"

"I don't know," Kaidan said honestly.

"Well, let's go see."

Jenkins scampered off before Kaidan could reply and he sighed, keeping an eye on him as they both joined the sea of red faces and thrusting elbows. As a junior officer Jenkins was sure to catch hell from some drunk commander sooner or later, and Kaidan wanted to be there when it happened. He'd seen such altercations lead to fist fights more than once.

The crowd sucked them in until they could see, past the front row of shouting soldiers, that the crowd was actually forming an arena in which four soldiers circled each other. Actually, two soldiers circled each other, each one bearing another on their shoulders. The two riders were holding the ends of a scrap of cloth and each one was trying to unseat his opponent without getting dragged off himself. They each carried a bottle in their unbound hand and were taking long pulls every few seconds. Kaidan had a feeling they were expected to complete the challenge before they were done.

Jenkins grabbed his elbow and pointed at the pair closest to them, standing with their backs to the crowd as the rider gave his arm a wrench that threatened to yank his opponent from his seat. The rider had bright red hair, hard chemical red that came from a bottle rather than genes, and he raised his bottle to his lips without relenting in his assault. Jenkins was shouting something, but Kaidan couldn't hear him over the roar of the crowd as the other rider slipped sideways on his mount, splashing liquor everywhere as he fought to maintain his seat.

The red haired man unwound one leg, a risky move in Kaidan's opinion, and kicked his opponent in the centre of the chest. It didn't look particularly hard but the startled man loosened his hold for a moment and another yank on the cloth sent him crashing to the ground, eliciting a deafening shriek from the gathered spectators. The victorious pair turned, arms raised in triumph, and the rider planted a hand on his carriers head, pushing himself up so he was standing balanced on his shoulders. He raised the bottle, still half full, and titled it over his head. Kaidan could see his Adams apple bob as he drained it dry, half a litre swirling away in just a few seconds. The rider laughed as he lifted the empty vessel over his head and Kaidan recognized him.

Commander Shepard. That must've been what Jenkins was trying to tell him.

The vanquished rider clawed his way to his feet as his enraged steed grabbed Shepard's uniform from behind and yanked him off his human pedestal. The crowd rippled as the energy in the room turned dark, every eye on Shepard as he stood up and eyed his attacker, now joined by his equally angry rider. He still had a bottle in one hand, and a bar at his side for breaking it against. The liquor in the air made such a thing seem very possible for a moment.

Shepard laughed, like that had been a great joke, and tossed his empty bottle on the bar. The crowd relaxed, just for a moment, and then Shepard punched his opponent in the face, a clean left cross with nothing held back. The man went down and his friend, purple faced and shrieking, leapt on the commander with his fists up.

It appeared that both men had friends, and Kaidan was thrown against Jenkins as the two groups turned on each other in the crowd and started throwing punches of their own. Kaidan grabbed a handful of Jenkins collar, not trusting the young officer to keep himself out of it, and dragged Jenkins out of the crowd, avoiding getting sucked in to half a dozen minor disputes. When he emerged into the relatively cool air outside the tangle of bodies he glanced back and saw that Shepard had mounted the bar and was standing with his shoulders thrown back, surveying the chaos he had created.

Kaidan frowned, wondering if he was happy with himself. If the broad grin on his face was any indication, he most definitely was.

Shepard raised one hand, taking two fingers into his mouth, and blew a whistle loud enough to break the maelstrom of noise emanating from the combatant soldiers. Faces turned toward him, every man going still as if he'd cast a spell on them. There was something impressive about him, even after that display in the ring.

"Bar tender," Shepard called, his voice carrying over the sudden quiet, "why don't you pour a round for us? My tab."

The soldiers cheered and the tender sighed, his relief palpable when he realized his bar wasn't going to be dismantled. He produced a line of shot glasses and started filling them as eager hands snatched them up and Shepard grinned, bending over and muttering something in his ear. The man actually laughed and Shepard only grinned harder, hitting him lightly on the shoulder, and climbed down. He pulled a bottle out from under the bar as he did, and peeled away from the crowd.

Kaidan watched two soldiers who had just been beating the crap out of each other clink glasses before they drank and shook his head, not quite sure what to make of it.

"What the shit was that?" Jenkins asked, his eyes wide.

"I have no idea," Kaidan replied honestly.

"That's fucking Delta Squadron," a man supplied, shoving a couple drinks in their hand. He was bleeding profusely from his nose, but didn't seem to have noticed. "Best parties in the Alliance!"

They drank with him as he raised his glass, it seemed like a bad idea to refuse. Cheap whiskey seared Kaidan's throat as he swallowed.

"Damn straight," they all jumped as Shepard appeared at the man's elbow with his bottle in hand and splashed another shot for each of them. He clinked the bottle with their glasses and tipped it over his head, pouring himself a mouthful. "Looks like you took a shot there, Keel."

"Just defending your honour sir," the other soldier said, wiping at his nose and examining the bright trail of blood it left on the back of his hand.

"My hero," Shepard grinned, "now go get yourself cleaned up."

"Right," Keel gave them one last grin and turned, heading for the bathrooms.

"Sorry you had to see that," Shepard at least had the decency to try and look ashamed as he turned to them, but the sparkle in his eye gave him away. He gave their drinks a meaningful look and they raised them. The liquor was much better, smooth and woody bourbon that probably cost more than all the shots the tender had just doled out for the rest of the bar.

Kaidan watched Commander Shepard as he drank. He looked older than he had in the Elysium vids, which made sense since that had been years ago, but he still didn't really look like a war hero. He had the broad, heavy body of an active duty marine, muscles standing out clearly under the folds of his uniform, but he was only average height. His red hair was ridiculous, the kind of colour a teenager would have chosen, made all the more garish by its contrast against his dark skin. His nose was crooked, probably broken at some point, and it looked strange among his otherwise boyish features. He had an impressive pair of scars, jagged and rough on his left temple, clean and deliberate on his right. Kaidan studied them for a moment, before Shepard caught his gaze, one black eyebrow raised.

His eyes were blue. Not normal blue either, but a fierce tropical shade that burned out of his dark face like lamp lights. They were the bluest eyes Kaidan had ever seen. He lowered his glass, his mind going blank for a moment as he took in the intensity of that gaze.

"I'm Shepard," he said, looking away and giving Jenkins a grin.

"We know," Jenkins answered immediately, "Commander Shepard. We've been assigned to the Normandy."

"I know," Shepard replied, "I looked at your files."

"Oh. Right, of course," Jenkins flushed, like a teenage girl under scrutiny from the most popular boy in school.

Shepard just smiled at him, a guileless expression intended to inspire comfort and confidence. His gaze shifted back to Kaidan, took in the dubious expression on his face, and though it didn't falter its tone changed instantly. Shepard had an inherent cockiness to him that brightened and sharpened as they looked at each other, but was more to it than just bravado and arrogance. Under the smile there was the solid, invincible confidence of a man who knew he was being appraised and was absolutely certain he was up to standard.

"So you're Lieutenant Alenko," he said, grinning harder and extending a friendly hand. "Pleased to meet you. I must admit, I found your service record impressive."

"I don't know what I could have done that impressed you, Commander," Kaidan replied, keeping his voice light to disguise the dislike building within him. He took the offered hand and shook.

"Oh come on," Shepard waved his words away with one hand, "false modesty is so disappointing. I like my officers competent and your jacket is full of commendations that suggest you're just that. Unless... do you think that's inaccurate?"

Kaidan wasn't sure if Shepard was intending to mock him. There was something inherently mocking about him, like the whole world was a joke only he was smart enough to see. Kaidan had known a lot of cocky young officers like him over the course of his career, and they weren't the sort of people he liked, but he swallowed his opinion and kept his voice level.

"No sir."

"Good," Shepard grinned and turned to Jenkins, who had been standing to the side and looking between the two of them awkwardly as they eyed each other. He grinned and offered the hand to him. "And you're Corporal Jenkins, all freshly minted. How does the new insignia feel?"

"It feels great, Commander," Jenkins pumped his hand eagerly up and down, his earnest grin returning. "I'm really looking forward to working with you."

"Good," he said again. He was clearly amused by the younger man's enthusiasm, but he managed to keep himself in check and not show it too blatantly. He looked up as a pair of soldiers bearing the same Special Forces insignia as him approached, teetering unsteadily.

"What're you doin' over here, Shep?" One of them asked, grabbing hold of Shepard's shoulder and pulling him between them. "Don't you have anything better t' do than gab with junior officers?"

"Careful," Shepard cautioned, grabbing hold of the woman to keep her upright. He reared back after a moment. "Jesus, you smell like you drank the whole brewery."

"Maybe," she grinned. Then she turned to the two of them and waved a hand, "get lost junior. You're not his type."

"Sundher! That's my new Corporal you're talking to," Shepard lost his smile for the first time since the two of them had entered the bar. The woman squinted at him, opening her mouth for some sort of surly retort, but her eyes focused and she took in the grim lines standing out around his thin lips and the steely glint in his eyes. A moment of tense silence fell.

"Sorry Commander," she said after a moment.

"I'm not the one that needs an apology," Shepard replied, his voice stern.

"Right, uh," she looked over at Jenkins, standing pale faced beside Kaidan. The bars on her collar said she was a Lieutenant. "Sorry, Corporal. It was just a little ribbing."

"No problem, L.T," Jenkins smiled easily, his natural exuberance coming back to his face. "I get it."

"Good man," Shepard clasped him around the shoulders and laughed, splashing another drink into his glass. "She was right about one thing though. You aren't my type."

"Speaking of which," Sundher's quieter and more sober companion pointed across the bar.

Everyone turned at once. The man indicated was leaning against the bar and watching them, but it was obvious who his attention was focused on. Kaidan watched a broad smile spread across Shepard's face as the man took a drink from his beer and slowly, deliberately, raised one thumb and wiped the moisture away from his bottom lip. He smiled as he lowered his drink and raised an eyebrow. He was tall, dark haired and dark eyed, handsome enough for a recruitment ad, and his uniform identified him as a Major.

"Yep," Shepard said after a moment, "good eye, Rhys. I'm out for the night."

He looked down at the still mostly full bottle in his hand and passed it to Kaidan.

"Enjoy yourselves men. But, you know, not too much. You've got inspection tomorrow morning," he winked at them, and with another cocky grin he waved goodbye to his former teammates before striding off toward his new target. He walked with his shoulders thrown back and his head high, just a few degrees away from strutting. When he sidled in beside his admirer and his smile said that he was already completely certain about what was going to happen between them.

Kaidan rolled his eyes and passed the bottle to Jenkins, who poured for the suddenly friendly soldiers.

And that was his first impression of Commander Shepard.


End file.
